793 Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

There are two good things in life – freedom of thought and freedom of action.

I’m afraid you’ve thought me a bigger fool than I am.

I’m not only my spirit buy my body, and who can decide how much I, my individual self, am conditioned by the accident of my body? Would Byron have been Byron but for his club foot, or Dostoyevsky Dostoyevsky without his epilepsy?

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

There’s nothing the world loves more than a ready-made description which they can hang on to a man, and so save themselves all trouble in future.

It wasn’t until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, ‘I don’t know.’

You can never know enough about your characters.

I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one’s power of appreciation persists.

The best style is the style you don’t notice.