13 Quotes by W Somerset Maugham

Do you know, it seems to me that a great deal of nonsense is talked about the dignity of work. Work is a drug that dull people take to avoid the pangs of unmitigated boredom. It has been adorned with fine phrases, because it is a necessity to most men, and men will always gild the pill they're obliged to swallow. Work is a sedative.

Mrs. Carey sighed as a woman but obeyed as a wife.

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.

It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is

What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?

She ate noisily, greedily, a little like a wild beast in a menagerie, and after she had finished each course rubbed the plate with pieces of bread till it was white and shining, as if she did not wish to lose a single drop of gravy. They had Camembert cheese, and it disgusted Philip to see that she ate rind and all of the portion that was given her. She could not have eaten more ravenously if she were starving.

And now she realized that his calmness was some instinctive shame of showing his feelings: he hid himself to weep.

He was letting his hair grow, and it was only because Nature is unkind and has no regard for the immortal longings of youth that he did not attempt a beard.

When people say they do not care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves. Generally they mean only that no one will know their vulgarities; 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.