793 Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

If only the good were a little less heavy-footed

Success. I don't believe it has any effect on me. For one thing I always expected it.

Only mediocre people are at the best all the time.

Death doesn't affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn't concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.

No action is in itself good or bad, but only such according to convention.

Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.

It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humour.

I can only guess that it made the world he went back to...strangely without meaning. Though he lived in it, though he even enjoyed it, it remained utterly remote. I think it had lost sense for him. In his heart was the reflection of a lovely dream that he could never quite recall.

There was once a professor of law who said to his students. When you are fighting a case, if you have facts on your side hammer them into the jury, and if you have the law on your side hammer it into the judge. But if you have neither the facts nor the law, asked one of his listeners? Then hammer the hell into the table, answered the professor.