793 Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

We do not write as we want, but as we can.

Clearly much that seemed valid seemed so only because he had been taught it from earliest youth.

There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who has lost it.

Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practiced at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.

In religion above all things the only thing of use is an objective truth. The only God that is of use is a being who is personal, supreme and good, and whose existence is as certain as that two and two make four.

Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.

The great man is too often all of a piece; it is the little man that is a bundle of contradictory elements. He is inexhaustible. You never come to the end of the surprises he has in store for you.