Quotes from W. Somerset Maugham

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.

Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.

Oh, it's always the same,' she sighed, 'if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.

She loved three things — a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man.

In civilized communities men's idiosyncrasies are mitigated by the necessity of conforming to certain rules of behavior. Culture is a mask that hides their faces.

But the unfortunate thing about this world is that good habits are so much easier to get out of than bad ones.

If people waited to know one another before they married, the world wouldn't be as overpopulated as it is now.

In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.

What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature.

The great man is too often all of a piece; it is the little man that is a bundle of contradictory elements. He is inexhaustible. You never come to the end of the surprises he has in store for you.

A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her...but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.

There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.

Reverie is the groundwork of creative imagination; it is the privilege of the artist that with him it is not as with other men an escape from reality, but the means by which he accedes to it.

My dear Arnold, we all hope that you have before you a distinguished political career. You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.

The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes...

There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.

Women are often under the impression that men are much more madly in love with them than they really are.

And I have the sunset, and the Tuscan wine, and the white teeth of the women in Rome. I am a traveler in Romance.

Refecting on the high divorce rate in America as contrasted with England "American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers

No woman is worth more than a fiver unless you're in love with her. Then she's worth all she costs you.

A woman will always sacrifice herself if you give her the opportunity. It is her favourite form of self indulgence.

Women's hearts are like old china, none the worse for a break or two.

The first duty of a woman is to be pretty, the second is to be well-groomed, and the third is never to contradict.

A woman may be as wicked as she likes, but if she isn't pretty it won't do her much good.