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- Read the works of W. Somerset Maugham online at The Literature Page
- I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't.
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil, 1925
- If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil, 1925
- One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her.
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil, 1925
- One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one's soul.
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil, 1925
- Remember that it is nothing to do your duty, that is demanded of you and is no more meritorious than to wash your hands when they are dirty; the only thing that counts is the love of duty; when love and duty are one, then grace is in you and you will enjoy a happiness which passes all understanding.
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil, 1925
- Tao. Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither.
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil, 1925
- There is only one way to win hearts and that is to make oneself like unto those of whom one would be loved.
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil, 1925
- Women are often under the impression that men are much more madly in love with them than they really are.
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil, 1925
- A God that can be understood is no God. Who can explain the Infinite in words?
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge, 1943
- A man ought to work. That's what he's here for. That's how he contributes to the welfare of the community.
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge, 1943
- A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life.
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge, 1943
- All important persons have about them someone in a subordinate position who has their ear. These dependents are very susceptible to slights, and, when they are not treated as they think they should be, will by well-directed shafts, constantly repeated, poison the minds of their patrons against those who have provoked their animosity. It is well to keep in with them.
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge, 1943
- American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge, 1943
- An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge, 1943
- I like manual labor. Whenever I've got waterlogged with study, I've taken a spell of it and found it spiritually invigorating.
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge, 1943
- I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persists.
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge, 1943
- 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?
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge, 1943
- It is very difficult to know people and I don't think one can ever really know any but one's own countrymen. For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they are born, the city apartment or the farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives' tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can't come to know by hearsay, you can only know them if you have lived them.
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge, 1943
- It's a toss-up when you decide to leave the beaten track. Many are called, but few are chosen.
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge, 1943
- It's always difficult to make conversation with a drunk, and there's no denying it, the sober are at a disadvantage with him.
- W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge, 1943
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