William Somerset Maugham Quotes

اگر ملتى چيزى را بر آزادى ترجيح دهد، همه چيز را از دست خواهد داد

But on the whole the impression was neither of tragedy nor of comedy. There was no describing it. It was manifold and various; there were tears and laughter, happiness and woe; it was tedious and interesting and indifferent; it was as you saw it: it was tumultuous and passionate; it was grave; it was sad and comic; it was trivial; it was simple and complex; joy was there and despair; the love of mothers for their children, and of men for women; lust trailed itself through the rooms with leaden feet, punishing the guilty and the innocent, helpless wives and wretched children; drink seized men and women and cost its inevitable price; death sighed in these rooms; and the beginning of life, filling some poor girl with terror and shame, was diagnosed there. There was neither good nor bad there. There were just facts. It was life.

A soul is a troublesome possession, and when man developed it he lost the Garden of Eden.

I hate people who play bridge as though they were at a funeral and knew their feet were getting wet.

The path to Salvation is as narrow and as difficult to walk as a razor's edge.

You see, money to you means freedom; to me it means bondage.

Oh, my dear boy, one mustn't expect gratitude. It's a thing that no one has a right to. After all, you do good because it gives you pleasure. It's the purest form of happiness there is. To expect thanks for it is really asking too much. If you get it, well, it's like a bonus on shares on which you've already received a dividend; it's grand, but you mustn't look upon it as your due.
[The back of beyond]

It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise...

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

Art is triumphant when it can use convention as an instrument of its own purpose.

I did not believe him capable of love. That is an emotion in which tenderness is an essential part, but Strickland had no tenderness either for himself or for others; there is in love a sense of weakness, a desire to protect, an eagerness to do good and to give pleasure — if not unselfishness, at all events a selfishness which marvellously conceals itself; it has in it a certain diffidence.

...with two lovers there is always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved; it is bitter truth to which most of us have to resign ourselves; but now and then there are two who love and two who let themselves be loved.

Remember that it is nothing to do your duty, that is demanded of you and is no more meritorious than to wash your hands when they are dirty; the only thing that counts is the love of duty; when love and duty are one, then grace is in you and you will enjoy a happiness which passes all understanding.

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.

Life wouldn’t be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present. When things are at their worst I find something always happens.