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W. Somerset Maugham Quotes - Page 15

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We find things beautiful because we recognize them and contrariwise we find things beautiful because their novelty surprises us.

We find things beautiful because we recognize them and contrariwise we find things beautiful because their novelty surprises us.

W. Somerset Maugham
Beauty, Beautiful, Novelty
W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

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.

W. Somerset Maugham
Jobs, Fear, Hypocrite
Cakes and Ale (1930) ch. 1

I could have forgiven it if he'd fallen desperately in love with someone and gone off with her. I should have thought that natural. I shouldn't really have blamed him. I should have thought he was led away. Men are so weak, and women are so unscrupulous.

W. Somerset Maugham
Men, Should Have, Gone
W. Somerset Maugham (2012). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.43, Courier Corporation

I think I was a little disappointed in her. I expected then people to be more of a piece than I do now, and I was distressed to find so much vindictiveness in so charming a creature. I did not realize how motley are the qualities that go to make up a human being. Now I am well aware that pettiness and grandeur, malice and charity, hatred and love, can find place side by side in the same human heart.

W. Somerset Maugham
Heart, Thinking, People
W. Somerset Maugham (2012). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.44, Courier Corporation

Perhaps it would have been possible to see in him a new Prometheus...the hero who for the good of mankind exposes himself to the agonies of the damned...undaunted by failure, by an unceasing effort of courage holding despair at bay, doggedly persistent in the face of self-doubt, which is the artist's bitterest enemy.

W. Somerset Maugham
Art, Hero, Self

There's no one as transparent as the person who thinks he's devilish deep.

W. Somerset Maugham
Wisdom, Thinking, History

Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art. ~Waddington

W. Somerset Maugham
Beautiful, Art, Perfect

She alone had been blind to his merit. Why? Because he loved her and she did not love him. What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?

W. Somerset Maugham
Heart, Men, Merit

...I couldn't but surmise that the devil, looking at the cruel wars that Christianity has occasioned, the persecutions, the tortures Christian has inflicted on Christian, the unkindness, the hypocracy, the intolerance, must consider the balance sheet with complacency. And when he remembers that it has laid upon mankind the bitter burden of the sense of sin that has darkened the beauty of the starry night and cast a baleful shadow on the passing plesures of a world to be enjoyed, he must chuckle as he murmurs: give the devil his due.

W. Somerset Maugham
Christian, War, Night
W. Somerset Maugham (2008). “The Razor's Edge”, p.226, Random House

It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who makes me laugh.

W. Somerset Maugham
Character, Laughing, Make Me Laugh
W. Somerset Maugham (2012). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.104, Courier Corporation

Reverie is the groundwork of creative imagination; it is the privilege of the artist that with him it is not as with other men an escape from reality, but the means by which he accedes to it.

W. Somerset Maugham
Mean, Reality, Men
W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

Women are constantly trying to commit suicide for love, but generally they take care not to succeed.

W. Somerset Maugham
Suicide, Trying, Care
W. Somerset Maugham (2012). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.93, Courier Corporation

We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house.

W. Somerset Maugham
Beautiful, Country, Aunt
W. Somerset Maugham (2009). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.292, The Floating Press

She says it's really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.

W. Somerset Maugham
Falling In Love, Husband, Rate

The author always loads his dice, but he must never let the reader see that he has done so, and by the manipulation of his plot, he can engage the reader's attention so that he does not perceive the violence that has been done to him.

W. Somerset Maugham
Doe, Plot, Attention

It is not for nothing that artists have called their works the children of their brains and likened the pains of production to the pains of childbirth.

W. Somerset Maugham
Children, Pain, Artist
W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

With the superciliousness of extreme youth, I put thirty-five as the utmost limit at which a man might fall in love without making a fool of himself.

W. Somerset Maugham
Falling In Love, Men, Might
W. Somerset Maugham (2012). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.18, Courier Corporation

People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that having read one or two of his books they feel on peculiarly intimate terms with him; or it may be that they dramatize themselves and, seeing themselves as it were as characters in a novel, are ready to be as open with him as they imagine the characters of his invention are.

W. Somerset Maugham
Book, Writing, Character

The average American can get into the kingdom of heaven much more easily than he can get into the Boulevard St. Germain.

W. Somerset Maugham
Fashion, Average, Heaven
W. Somerset Maugham (2008). “The Razor's Edge”, p.43, Random House

The audience is not the least important actor in the play and if it will not do its allotted share the play falls to pieces.

W. Somerset Maugham
Fall, Play, Important
W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less.

W. Somerset Maugham
People, Would Be, World
W. Somerset Maugham (2011). “A Writer's Notebook”, p.15, Random House

No woman is worth more than a fiver unless you're in love with her. Then she's worth all she costs you.

W. Somerset Maugham
Women, Cost
W. Somerset Maugham (2011). “A Writer's Notebook”, p.66, Random House

The day broke grey and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman servant came into a room in which a child was sleeping and drew the curtains. She glanced mechanically at the house opposite, a stucco house with a portico, and went to the child's bed.

W. Somerset Maugham
Children, Book, Sleep
W. Somerset Maugham (2016). “Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)”, p.3, Diversion Books

For the complete life, the perfect pattern includes old age as well as youth and maturity.

W. Somerset Maugham
Maturity, Perfect, Age
W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.

W. Somerset Maugham
Rain, Unjust
W. Somerset Maugham (2016). “Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)”, p.732, Diversion Books

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