793 Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

There are few things so pleasant as a picnic lunch eaten in perfect comfort.

The writer is free to work in whatever place and whatever time he chooses; he is free to idle if he feels ill or dispirited.

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 practised at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.

Deprive him [the habitual reader] of printed matter and he grows nervous, moody and restless; then, like the alcoholic bereft of brandy who will drink shellac or methylated spirit, he will make do with the advertisements of a paper five years old; he will make do with a telephone directory.

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too

The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account.

People often feed the hungry so that nothing may disturb their own enjoyment of a good meal.

We learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.

Beauty is an ecstasy, it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose. You can smell it and that is all.