W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to university go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene. It is the white-collar proletariat. They do not go to university to acquire culture but to get a job, and when they have got one, scamp it.

To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination.

Unfortunately sometimes one can’t do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.

When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch’s statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.

There’s always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.

The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither.

I’d sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.

The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.

In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.