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
A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Politicians, Politics
I learnt that men were moved by a savage egoism, that love was only the dirty trick nature played on us to achieve the continuation of the species.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Love
Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Temptation
Like all weak men, he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one’s mind.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Change
It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Criticism
Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequences than to have a really affectionate mother.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Family, Mothers
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
Topics: Friendship
The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: The Future, Future
The end of culture is right living.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Culture
You can do anything in this world if you are prepares to take the consequences.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Consequences
It’s very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writing, Writers
Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Sincerity in society is like an iron girder in a house of cards.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Sincerity
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Party
A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Writing
Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more telling. To know that a thing actually happened gives it a poignancy, touches a chord, which a piece of acknowledged fiction misses. It is to touch this chord that some authors have done everything they could to give you the impression that they are telling the plain truth.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Authors & Writing
In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Night
The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Love
We do not write as we want, but as we can.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Acceptance, Talents, Work, Abilities, Realistic Expectations
I knew I had no lyrical quality, a small vocabulary, little gift of metaphor. The original and striking simile never occurred to me. Poetic flights… were beyond my powers. On the other hand, I had an acute power of observation, and it seemed to me that I could see a great many things that other people missed. I could put down in clear terms what I saw… I knew that I should never write as well as I could wish, but I thought, with pains, that I could arrive at writing as well as my natural defects allowed.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Gratitude, Appreciation, Blessings
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: Dying, Advice, Death
If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Nationalities, Nation, Nationality, Nationalism
The passing moment is all we can be sure of; it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Act, Sin
The world in general doesn’t know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Originality
There are two good things in life—freedom of thought and freedom of action.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Freedom
The life force is vigorous. The delight that accompanies it counter-balances all the pains and hardships that confront men.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Life
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Tradition
You can’t learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Integrity
Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Simplicity
Common-sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncrasies of individual character and the opinion of the newspapers.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Common Sense
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