William Somerset Maugham Quotes

"You know, a thing that has always struck me is people's fiendish eagerness to give anyone away. They pretend it's public spirit, I don't believe a word of it; I don't believe it's even, as a rule anyway, the desire for notoriety; I believe it's just due to the baseness of human nature that gets a kick out of injuring others. There's a whole mass of people who can't wait if they have the chance of doing down someone who's trying to get away with anything."

"God? What has God to do with it? Do you suppose I can look at the misery in which the vast majority of the people live in the world and believe in God? Do you suppose I believe in God who let the Bolsheviks kill my poor, simple father? Do you know what I think? I think God has been dead for millions upon millions of years. I think when he took infinity and set in motion the process that has resulted in the universe, he died, and for ages and ages men have sought and worshipped a being who ceased to exist in the act of making existence possible for them." He wondered if there was anything in what she said, this woman with her tragic history and miserable life, that God had died when he created the wide world; and was he lying dead on some vast mountain range on a dead star or was he absorbed into the universe he caused to be?

"It's so wonderful to shut out the world for a few hours. Rest, peace, silence, solitude. You would think they were luxuries that only the very rich can afford, and yet they cost nothing. Strange that they should be so hard to come by."

Aren't you missing a lot of fun? You know, one's young for such a little while.

By the time I was twenty-four I had constructed a complete system of philosophy. It rested on two principles: The Relativity of Things and The Circumferentiality of Man. I have since discovered that the first was not a very original discovery. It may be that the other was profound, but though I have racked my brains I cannot for the life of me remember what it was.

We are not the same persons this year as last ; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.

Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.

There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.

The great critic ... must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.

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

I have been forced to conclude from this that we know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind. Failure makes people bitter and cruel.

... habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.