W. Somerset Maugham

“Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.”

“Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.”

“You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.”

“I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.”

“Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.”

“Only a mediocre person is always at his best.”

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

“If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.”

“What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.”

“Impropriety is the soul of wit.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.”

“It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.”