The crown of literature is poetry.

- 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

If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?

- W. Somerset Maugham

An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.

- W. Somerset Maugham

There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action.

- W. Somerset Maugham

Impropriety is the soul of wit.

- W. Somerset Maugham

The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.

- W. Somerset Maugham

Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.

- W. Somerset Maugham

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

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.

- W. Somerset Maugham

At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.

- W. Somerset Maugham

It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

- W. Somerset Maugham

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

- W. Somerset Maugham

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.

- W. Somerset Maugham

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

The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.

- W. Somerset Maugham

Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.

- W. Somerset Maugham

The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.

- W. Somerset Maugham

Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.

- W. Somerset Maugham

Money is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets.

- W. Somerset Maugham