Note: After several years of doing these posts every week, I find myself shocked and ashamed that we have known, squandered, and ignored so much knowledge.
“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Books and You
“Impropriety is the soul of wit.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
“It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
“When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.”
― W. Somerset Maugham
“The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.”
― Somerset Maugham
“She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.”
― W. Somerset Maugham
“I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil
“It was one of the queer things of life that you saw a person every day for months and were so intimate with him that you could not imagine existence without him; then separation came, and everything went on in the same way, and the companion who had seemed essential proved unnecessary.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
“You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live in is to recognize the inevitable selfishness of humanity. You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they? When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world, you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably. Men seek but one thing in life -- their pleasure.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
“Only a mediocre person is always at his best.”
― W. Somerset Maugham
“Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it. If change is the essence of existence, one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premise of our philosophy.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge
“It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who makes me laugh.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
“I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
“The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge
“Like all weak men, he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
“Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain. We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them. 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, The Moon and Sixpence
“It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale: Or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard
“I've always been interested in people, but I've never liked them.”
― W. Somerset Maugham
“You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.”
― W. Somerset Maugham
“Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
“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
“The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither. We must be very humble. We must see the beauty of quietness. We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us. And let us seek the love of simple, ignorant people. Their ignorance is better than all our knowledge. Let us be silent, content in our little corner, meek and gentle like them. That is the wisdom of life.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
“I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell... their heart's in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.”
― W. Somerset Maugham
I’m joining the beggars banquet and including this link so you can send me money if you want. You will earn a place on my wall of smiley faces with a small contribution.
A read, therefore I am.