If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.
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

Impropriety is the soul of wit.
W. Somerset Maugham

In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.
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

It is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it.
W. Somerset Maugham

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it.
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

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.
W. Somerset Maugham

It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.
W. Somerset Maugham

It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is.
W. Somerset Maugham

It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humour.
W. Somerset Maugham

It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection.
W. Somerset Maugham

It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.
W. Somerset Maugham

It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say "I don't know."
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

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

It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
W. Somerset Maugham

Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.
W. Somerset Maugham

Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
W. Somerset Maugham