William Somerset Maugham Quotes

Unless love is passion, it's not love, but something else; and passion thrives not on satisfaction, but on impediment.

There are many foolish people in the world and when a man in a rather high position puts on no frills, slaps them on the back, and tells them he'll do anything in the world for them, they are very likely to think him clever.

When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself?

Because women can do nothing except love, they've given it a ridiculous importance. They want to persuade us that it's the whole of life. It's an insignificant part.

He found that it was easy to make a heroic gesture, but hard to abide by its results.

When people say they do not care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves. Generally they mean only that they will do as they choose, in the confidence that no one will know their vagaries; and at the utmost only that they are willing to act contrary to the opinion of the majority because they are supported by the approval of their neighbours. It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.

The most difficult thing for a wise woman to do is to pretend to be a foolish one.

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

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

The tragedy of love is not death or separation. How long do you think it would have been before one or other of them ceased to care? Oh, it is dreadfully bitter to look at a woman whom you have loved with all your heart and soul, so that you felt you could not bear to let her out of your sight, and realize that you would not mind if you never saw her again. The tragedy of love is indifference.

To my mind the most interesting thing in art is the
personality of the artist; and if that is singular, I am
willing to excuse a thousand faults.

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.

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

The new-born child does not realize that his body is more a part of himself than surrounding objects, and will play with his toes without any feeling that they belong to him more than the rattle by his side; and it is only by degrees, through pain, that he understands the fact of the body. And experiences of the same kind are necessary for the individual to become conscious of himself; but here there is the difference that, although everyone becomes equally conscious of his body as a separate and complete organism, everyone does not become equally conscious of himself as a complete and separate personality.... It is such that he, as little conscious of himself as the bee in a hive, who are lucky in life, for they have the best chance of happiness: their activities are shared by all, and their pleasures are only pleasures because they are enjoyed in common.... It is because of them that man has been called a social animal.

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