793 Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

If people waited to know one another before they married, the world wouldn't be as overpopulated as it is now.

The subjunctive mood is in its death throes, and the best thing to do is to put it out of its misery as soon as possible.

It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, 'I don't know.'

Yet magic is no more than the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Will, love and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses; and whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician. Magic has but one dogma, namely, that the seen is the measure of the unseen.

Life is really very fantastic, and one has to have a peculiar sense of humour to see the fun of it. [Virtue]

There are men whose sense of humour is so ill developed that they still bear a grudge against Copernicus because he dethroned them from the central position in the universe. They feel it a personal affront that they can no longer consider themselves the pivot upon which turns the whole of created things.

A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves what everyone else believes.

Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical.

When you have loved as she has loved, you grow old beautifully.