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
The best style is the style you don’t notice.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Writing
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, Death, Advice
Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Writers, Writing, Authors & Writing
The audience is not the least important actor in the play, and if it will not do its allotted share the play falls to pieces.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Acting
Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.
—W. Somerset Maugham
You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you’re cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Critics, Criticism
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 crown of literature is poetry.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Literature, One liners
I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to university go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene. It is the white-collar proletariat. They do not go to university to acquire culture but to get a job, and when they have got one, scamp it. They have no manners and are woefully unable to deal with any social predicament. Their idea of a celebration is to go to a public house and drink six beers. They are mean, malicious and envious . They are scum.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Education, Colleges, Universities
Sincerity in society is like an iron girder in a house of cards.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Sincerity
There is only one thing about which I am certain, and this is that there is very little about which one can be certain.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Uncertainty, Doubt
When you choose your friends, don’t be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Character
I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Despair
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.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Hypocrisy
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
There is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Sex
It’s very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writers, Writing
Impropriety is the soul of wit.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: One liners, Wit
You can do anything in this world if you are prepares to take the consequences.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Consequences
Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Perfectionism, Perfection
Tolerance is another word for indifference.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Tolerance
The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Beauty
I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul’s good to do each day two things they disliked… . It is a precept I have followed scrupulously: for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Discipline
I don’t think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Time Management
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.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Speech, Conversation
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
We know our friends by their defects rather than their merits.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Friendship, Friends
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 ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Youth, Illusion
The great critic must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Philosophy, Literature
Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it’s a mistake to make a habit out of it.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Marriage
People who ask for your criticism want only praise.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Critics, Criticism
Lady Hodmarsh and the duchess immediately assumed the clinging affability that persons of rank assume with their inferiors in order to show them that they are not in the least conscious of any difference in station between them.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Class
Common sense and good nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Common Sense
It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Suffering
For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Fiction, Authors & Writing
There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Authors & Writing
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
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Tradition
The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquility of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Age, Aging
You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.
—W. Somerset Maugham
Topics: Laughter
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