William Somerset Maugham Quotes

A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life.

"If there's anything I dislike it's the violin", she answered. "Why one should want to hear anyone scrape the hairs of a horse's tail against the guts of a dead cat is something I shall never understand."

I have not been afraid of excess: excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.

This love was a torment, and he resented bitterly the subjugation in which it held him; he was a prisoner and he longed for freedom.

Sometimes he awoke in the morning and felt nothing; his soul leaped, for he thought he was free; he loved no longer; but in a little while, as he grew wide awake, the pain settled in his heart, and he knew that he was not cured yet.

Why do you read then?'

Partly for pleasure, because it's a habit and I'm just as uncomfortable if I don't read as if I don't smoke, and partly to know myself. When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me; I've got out of the book all that's any use to me and I can't get anything more if I read it a dozen times. ...

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]

Wounded vanity can make a woman more vindictive than a lioness robbed of her cubs.

I held my breath, for to me there is nothing more awe-inspiring than when a man discovers to you the nakedness of his soul.

We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young judge us.

Women are always glad to listen when you discourse upon love...

Mandalay has its name; the falling cadence of the lovely word has gathered about itself the chiaroscuro of romance.

For men, as a rule, love is but an episode which takes place among the other affairs of the day, and the emphasis laid on it in novels gives it an importance which is untrue to life. There are few men to whom it is the most important thing in the world, and they are not the very interesting ones; even women, with whom the subject is of paramount interest, have a contempt for them.

It requires the feminine temperament to repeat the same thing three times with unabated zest.

From a social standpoint the man of science does not exist.

Are you sure you can prevent yourself from falling in love one of these days? Such things do happen, you know, even to the most prudent men.'

Simon gave him a strange, one might even have thought a hostile, look.

I should tear it out of my heart as I'd wrench out of my mouth a rotten tooth.