William Somerset Maugham

Quotes

1. Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.

   p. 196

2. 

   What mean and cruel things men can do for the love of God.

   p. 67

3. 

   Religion is...a conspiracy of...priests to gain control over the people...

4. 

   Sentimentality is only sentiment that rubs you up the wrong way.

5. 

   Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.

   p. 17

6. 

   There are men who are possessed by an urge so strong to do some particular thing that they can't help themselves, they've got to do it. They're prepared to sacrifice everything to satisfy their yearning.

7. 

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

   p. 13

8. 

   He was the kind of man with whom one would have hesitated to pass a lonely evening, but with whom one might cheerfully have looked forward to spending six months.

9. 

   If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie.

   p. 76

10. 

    Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.

    p. 20

11. 

    A god that can be understood is not a god.

12. 

    There are men whose sense of humour is so ill developed that they still bear a grudge against Copernicus because he dethroned them from the central position in the universe. They feel it a personal affront that they can no longer consider themselves the pivot upon which turns the whole of created things.

    p. 66