793 Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

If I've done anything for you, I've done it because I love you. You owe me nothing. I don't want you to do anything unless you love me.

They will notdisappoint you, and you will look upon them morecharitably. Men seek but one thing in life—their pleasure

If you haven’t got the gift no one can give it to you, but if you have you can be taught how to use it.

He was not crying for the pain they had caused him, nor for the humiliation he had suffered when they looked at his foot, but with rage at himself because, unable to stand the torture, he had put out his foot of his own accord.

The path to Salvation is as narrow and as difficult to walk as a razor's edge.

I respect him. He has brains and character; and that, I may tell you, is a very unusual combination.

Can the law get blood out of a stone? I haven't any money.

I do not attachany exaggerated importance to my poetical works. Life isthere to be lived rather than to be written about. My aimis to search out the manifold experience that it offers,wringing from each moment what of emotion it presents.I look upon my writing as a graceful accomplishmentwhich does not absorb but rather adds pleasure toexistence. And as for posterity—damn posterity.

Perhaps her faults and follies, the unhappiness she had suffered, were not entirely vain if she could follow the path that now she dimly discerned before her, not the path that kind funny old Waddington had spoken of that led nowhither, but the path those dear nuns at the convent followed so humbly, the path that led to peace.