793 Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

The tragedy of love is not death or separation. How long do you think it would have been before one or other of them ceased to care? Oh, it is dreadfully bitter to look at a woman whom you have loved with all your heart and soul, so that you felt you could not bear to let her out of your sight, and realize that you would not mind if you never saw her again. The tragedy of love is indifference.

I'd sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.

There are directors who desire to be artistic. It is pathetic to compare the seriousness of their aim with the absurdity of their attainment.

I've met so many people, often the scum of the earth, and found them, you know, quite decent. I am an uncomfortable stranger to moral indignation.

Love is what happens to men and women who don't know each other.

The officers saluted as she passed and gravely bowed. They walked back across the courtyard and got into their chairs. She saw Waddington light a cigarette. A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.

I don't understand anything. Life is so strange. I feel like some one who's lived all his life by a duck-pond and suddenly is shown the sea. It makes me a little breathless, and yet it fills me with elation. I don't want to die, I want to live. I'm beginning to feel a new courage. I feel like one of those old sailors who set sail for undiscovered seas and I think my soul hankers for the unknown.

I do not think you want too much sincerity in society. It would be like an iron girder in a house of cards.

Love is what happens to a man and woman who don't know each other.