W. Somerset Maugham

“Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.”

“The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.”

“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.”

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

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

“The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.”

“The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.”

“We learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.”

“Sentimentality is the only sentiment that rubs you the wrong way.”

“Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.”

“The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.”

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

“Tolerance is another word for indifference.”

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