793 Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

In later ages the sages of India in recognition of human infirmity admitted that salvation may be won by the way of love and the way of works, but they never denied that the noblest way, though the hardest, is the way of knowledge, for its instrument is the most precious faculty of man, his reason.

...her very kindness was cruel because it was founded not on love but on reason...

She’s wonderful. Tell her I’ve never seen such beautiful hands. I wonder what she sees in you.”Waddington, smiling, translated the question.“She says I’m good.”“As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue,” Kitty mocked.

I prefer a loose woman to a selfish one and a wanton to a fool.

It was because he could not bring himself to believe in the reality of his experience that he did not give way to utter despair.

I gather from what you have not said that he is an unmitigated scoundrel."R. smiled with his pale blue eyes."I don't know that I'd go quite so far as that. He hasn't had the value of a public-school education. His ideas of playing the game aren't quite the same as yours and mine. I don't know that I would leave a gold cigarette-case about when he was in the neighbourhood, but if he had lost money to you at poker and he had pinched your cigarette-case, he would immediately pawn it to pay you.

You know, the Philistines have long since discarded the rack and stake as a means of suppressing the opinions they feared: they've discovered a much more deadly weapon of destruction -- the wisecrack.

He could not understand himself. Would he always love only in absence and be prevented from enjoying anything when he had the chance

There's nothing to tell, ' she said truthfully, but in such a manner as to convey that three volumes would scarcely have contained the lurid facts. ' You mustn't be curious.