W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

"We know our friends by their defects rather than their merits."

"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."

"There are two good things in life -- freedom of thought and freedom of action."

"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 unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones."

"You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance."

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

"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. Failure makes people bitter and cruel."

"What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature."

"The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties."

"The writer is more concerned to know than to judge."

"There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are."

"It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who has lost it."

"American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers."

"Perfection has one grave defect. It is apt to be dull."

"Perfection is what American women expect to find in their husbands... but English women only hope to find in their butlers."