W. Somerset Maugham

W. Somerset Maugham

37 quotes

English playwright and author W. Somerset Maugham has a gift for language that makes complex ideas feel instantly clear. Celebrated for his plays, novels and short stories, W. Somerset Maugham brought that same intensity to the written and spoken word. Discover 44 of W. Somerset Maugham's most memorable quotes, ranging across Money, Love, Freedom, Age, and Truth. Among their most shared lines: "Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it."

“Death doesn't affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn't concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Death

All Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

“If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Change

“Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Money

“The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Success

“When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Friendship

“What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Age

“Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Freedom

“The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Anger

“It is not true that suffering ennobles the character happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Happiness

“Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Art

“It's a funny thing about life if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Best

“It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Work

“Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Age

“It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humour.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Beauty

“Death doesn't affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn't concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Death

“Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Death

“Only a mediocre person is always at his best.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Best

“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.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Beauty

“A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Home

“Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Age

“The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

Nature