793 Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

Dying is the most hellishly boresome experience in the world! Particularly when it entails dying of 'natural causes'.

The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.

The average American can get into the kingdom of heaven much more easily than he can get into the Boulevard St. Germain.

The crown of literature is poetry.

The passing moment is all we can be sure of; it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it.

You will have to learn many tedious things,...which you will forget the moment you have passed your final examination, but in anatomy it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.

No egoism is so insufferable as that of the Christian with regard to his soul.

It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.

The mathematician who after seeing Phedre asked: 'Qu'est que ca prouve?' was not such a fool as he has been generally made out. No one has ever been able to explain why the Doric temple of Paestum is more beautiful than a glass of cold beer except by bringing in considerations that have nothing to do with beauty.