W Somerset Maugham Quotes

“I began to meditate upon the writer's life. It is full of tribulation. First he must endure poverty and the world's indifference; then, having achieved a measure of success, he must submit to a good grace of its hazards...But he has one compensation, Whenever he has anything on his mind, whether it be a harassing reflection, grief at the death of a friend, unrequited love, wounded pride, anger at the treachery of someone to whom he has shown kindness, in short any emotion or any perplexing thought, he has only to put it down in black and white, using it as a theme of a story or the decoration of an essay, to forget all about it. He is the only free man.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale

“I feel that when I travel I can change myself a little, and I return from a journey not quite the same self I was.”
― Tan Twan Eng, The House of Doors

“Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it’s a mistake to make a habit of it.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“Non so. Io non capisco nulla di nulla della vita. E’ così strana…mi sento come se avessi passato tutta la mia esistenza in riva a uno stagno e d’un tratto vedessi il mare. E mi sento mancare il respiro, ma sono al tempo stesso piena di esaltazione. Io non voglio morire, voglio vivere. Comincio ad avere un nuovo coraggio…mi sembra di essere uno di quei vecchi marinai che salpavano un tempo per mari sconosciuti. Sì, la mia anima anela all’ignoto.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“She loved him now with a new love because he had made her suffer.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“People wonder at the romantic lives of poets and artists, but they should rather wonder at their gift of expression. The occurrences which pass unnoticed in the life of the average man in the existence of a writer of talent are profoundly interesting. It is the man they happen to that makes their significance.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, A Writer's Notebook

“The feeling of apartness from others comes to most with puberty, but it is not always developed to such a degree as to make the difference between the individual and his fellows noticeable to the individual. It is such as he, as little conscious of himself as the bee in a hive, who are the lucky in life, for they have the best chance of happiness: their activities are shared by all, and their pleasures are only pleasures because they are enjoyed in common; you will see them on Whit-Monday dancing on Hampstead Heath, shouting at a football match, or from club windows in Pall Mall cheering a royal procession. It is because of them that man has been called a social animal.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“because they were humans they were unsatisfied”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“W. Somerset Maugham once said there were three rules for writing a novel and that no one knew what they were. I do:

1. Write
2. Rewrite
3. Two writes don't make a wrong!”
― Stewart Stafford