793 Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

The end of culture is right living.

Because women can do nothing except love, they’ve given it a ridiculous importance. They want to persuade us that it’s the whole of life. It’s an insignificant part.

There is no cruelty greater than a woman’s to a man who loves her and whom she does not love; she has no kindness then, no tolerance even, she has only an insane irritation.

In civilized communities men’s idiosyncrasies are mitigated by the necessity of conforming to certain rules of behavior. Culture is a mask that hides their faces.

We can none of us step into the same river twice, but the river flows on and the other river we step into is cool and refreshing, too.

There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one’s means of livelihood.

It’s asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic. – Of Human Bondage.

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

D’you call life a bad job? Never! We’ve had our ups and downs, we’ve had our struggles, we’ve always been poor, but it’s been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.