W. Somerset Maugham Quotes - Page 3

Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither.

You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to such temptation.'

Well, I know I'm not a Christian and I'm beginning to doubt whether I'm a gentleman,' said Philip.

No egoism is so insufferable as the Christian with regard to his soul.

Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.

Was it necessary to tell me that you wanted nothing in the world but me?'

The corners of his mouth drooped peevishly.

Oh, my dear, it's rather hard to take quite literally the things a man says when he's in love with you.'

Didn't you mean them?'

At the moment.

The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.

From the standpoint of what eternity is it better to have read a thousand books than to have ploughed a million furrows?

Laugh while you've got the chance, you won't laugh much when you are dead and buried.

The ideal has many names and beauty is but one of them.

I do not like these painted faces that look all alike; and I think women are foolish to dull their expression and obscure their personality with powder, rouge, and lipstick.

Beauty is a blind alley. It is a mountain peak which once reached leads nowhere […] Beauty is that which satisfies the aesthetic instinct. But who wants to be satisfied? It is only to the dullard that enough is as good as a feast. Let us face it: beauty is a bit of a bore.

Himself an ugly man, insignificant
of appearance, he prized very highly comeliness in others.

My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.

Mrs. MacAndrew shared the common opinion of her sex that a man is always a brute to leave a woman who is attached to him, but that a woman is much to blame if he does.

Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.

We paint from within outward - if we force our vision on the world it calls us great painters; if we don't it ignores us; but we are the same. We don't attach any meaning to greatness or smallness. What happens to our work afterward is unimportant; we have got all we could out of it while we were doing it.

El arte es la naturaleza vista a traves de una personalidad

She says it's really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.

Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it’s a mistake to make a habit of it.

He was not crying for the pain they had caused him, nor for the humiliation he had suffered when they looked at his foot, but with rage at himself because, unable to stand the torture, he had put out his foot of his own accord.