William Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) was a British novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. One of the most popular writers in English in the 20th century, he is noted for his clarity of style, cosmopolitan settings, skill in storytelling, and a keen understanding of human nature.
Born in Paris of Irish origin, Maugham was educated at King’s School, Canterbury, and read philosophy and literature at Heidelberg in Germany. He studied medicine, qualified as a surgeon at St Thomas’s Hospital in London. A year’s internship as an obstetrician in the London slums gave him the material for his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897.)
In 1914, Maugham served first with a Red Cross unit in France, then as a secret agent in Geneva, and finally in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg,) attempting to prevent the outbreak of the Russian Revolution. In World War II, he served as a secret agent for the British.
Productive throughout a long life, Maugham is still regarded as having done his great work in four books: Of Human Bondage (1915,) a semi-autobiographical account of a young medical student’s painful progress toward maturity, The Moon and Sixpence (1919,) an account of an unconventional artist, suggested by the life of the French post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin, Cakes and Ale (1930,) the story of a famous novelist, which is thought to contain caricatures of novelists Thomas Hardy and Hugh Walpole, and The Razor’s Edge (1944,) the story of a young American war veteran’s quest for a satisfying way of life.
During his later years, Maugham primarily wrote essays. The Summing Up (1938) and A Writer’s Notebook (1949) explain Maugham’s philosophy of life as resigned atheism and a certain skepticism about the extent of man’s innate goodness and intelligence. His other works include essays on Goethe, Chekhov, Henry James, and Katherine Mansfield in Points of View (1958.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by W. Somerset Maugham
I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Reading, Books, Literature
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to popular belief, is more powerful in the mature than the young.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Imagination
Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Simplicity
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 cruel and bitter.
—W. Somerset Maugham
The unfortunate thing about this world is that good habits are so much easier to give up than bad ones.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Habit
Now it is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Expectation
The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Love
Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Death, Advice, Dying
Now it is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it.
—W. Somerset Maugham
A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Writing
Now it is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it.
—W. Somerset Maugham
People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Criticism
Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.
—W. Somerset Maugham
From the earliest times the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser than they, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Aging
The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Love
There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Evil
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Excellence, Success
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.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Age, Aging
There are two good things in life—freedom of thought and freedom of action.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Freedom
Now it is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Determination
Common sense and good nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Common Sense
Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Life
What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one’s faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one’s memories.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Aging, Time, Age
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