Quotes from W. Somerset Maugham

It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humour.

We have long passed the Victorian Era when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.

Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it.

The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.

The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.

To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all of the miseries of life.

Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.

Impropriety is the soul of wit.

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.

For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.

Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all1

Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.

The end of culture is right living.

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.

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 and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.

You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.

Money is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets.

I don't think you want too much sincerity in society. It would be like an iron girder in a house of cards.

If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.

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

The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.

She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.

I [Death] was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.