793 Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.

Perhaps the most important use of money - It saves time. Life is so short, and there's so much to do, one can't afford to waste a minute; and just think how much you waste, for instance, in walking from place to place instead of going by bus and in going by bus instead of by taxi.

I like manual labor. Whenever I've got waterlogged with study, I've taken a spell of it and found it spiritually invigorating.

Art for art's sake makes no more sense than gin for gin's sake.

What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.

To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give.

Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.

Tolerance is another word for indifference.

Vaguely, as when you are studying a foreign language and read a page which at first you can make nothing of, till a word or a sentence gives you a clue; and on a sudden suspicion, as it were, of the sense flashes across your troubled wits, vaguely she gained an inkling into the workings of Walter's mind. It was like a dark and ominous landscape seen by a flash of lightning and in a moment hidden again by the night. She shuddered at what she saw.