793 Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

  • Author W. Somerset Maugham
  • Quote

    Love is not always blind and there are few things that cause greater wretchedness than to love with all your heart someone who you know is unworthy of love.

  • Share



  • Author W. Somerset Maugham
  • Quote

    I have always been convinced that if a woman once made up her mind to marry a man, nothing but instant flight could save him.

  • Tags
  • Share

  • Author W. Somerset Maugham
  • Quote

    When a man's in love, he at once makes a pedestal of the Ten Commandments and stands on the top of them with his arms akimbo. When a woman's in love she doesn't care two straws for Thou Shalt and Thou Shalt Not.

  • Tags
  • Share


  • Author W. Somerset Maugham
  • Quote

    Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination.

  • Tags
  • Share

  • Author W. Somerset Maugham
  • Quote

    The spirit is often most free when the body is satiated with pleasure; indeed, sometimes the stars shine more brightly seen from the gutter than from the hilltop.

  • Tags
  • Share

  • Author W. Somerset Maugham
  • Quote

    Lady Hodmarsh and the duchess immediately assumed the clinging affability that persons of rank assume with their inferiors in order to show them that they are not in the least conscious of any difference in station between them.

  • Tags
  • Share