Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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