793 Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

If a wise man studies the science of the occult, his duty is not to laugh at everything, but to seek patiently, slowly, perseveringly, the truth that may be concealed in the night of these illusions.

Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.

I feel vaugely that you're paying me a compliment', returned Mrs. Crowley, 'but it's so elusive that I can't quite catch it.''The best compliments are those that flutter about your head like butterflies around a flower.''I much prefer to fix them down on a board with a pin through their insides and a narrow strip of paper to hold down each wing.

You're beginning to dislike me, aren't you? Well, dislike me. It doesn't make any difference to me now.

Schools are made for the average. The holes are all round, and whatever shape the pegs are they must wedge in somehow. One hasn't time to bother about anything but the average.

He thought to himself that there could be no greater torture in the world than at the same time to love and to contemn.

She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.

A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, he told her, to which she retorted that a proverb was the last refuge of the mentally destitute.

He was a man who saw nothing for himself, but only through a literary atmosphere, and he was dangerous because he had deceived himself into sincerity. He honestly mistook his sensuality for romantic emotion, his vacillation for the artistic temperament and his idleness for philosophic calm.....he lied and never knew that he lied, and when it was pointed out to him said that lies were beautiful. He was an idealist.