793 Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

because they were humans they were unsatisfied

He had the good memory which is more useful for scholastic achievement than mental power.

Never pause unless you have a reason for it, but when you pause, pause as long as you can.

He had pondered for twenty years the problem whether he loved liquor because it made him talk or whether he loved conversation because it made him thirsty

Nothing is more tedious than to talk with persons who treat your most obvious remarks as startling paradoxes and Edward suffered likewise from that passion for argument which is the bad talkers’ substitution for conversation. People who cannot talk are always proud of their dialectic. They want to modify your tritest observations and even if you suggest the day is fine, insist on arguing it out.

Philip knew by now that whenever anyone was angry with him his first thought was to say something about his club-foot. His estimate of the human race was determined by the fact that scarcely anyone failed to resist the temptation.

If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded...

To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day.