793 Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.

Was it necessary to tell me that you wanted nothing in the world but me?' The corners of his mouth drooped peevishly. Oh, my dear, it's rather hard to take quite literally the things a man says when he's in love with you.' Didn't you mean them?' At the moment.

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

The nature of men and women - their essential nature - is so vile and despicable that if you were to portray a person as he really is, no one would believe you.

They say a woman always remembers her first lover with affection; but perhaps she does not always remember him.

People talk of beauty lightly, and having no feeling for words, they use that one carelessly, so that it loses its force; and the thing it stands for, sharing its name with a hundred trivial objects, is deprived of dignity. They call beautiful a dress, a dog, a sermon; and when they are face to face with Beauty cannot recognise it.

Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.

I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.

self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion...