W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

“You naughty boy, Miss Watkin WILL be cross with you.”

“Your mamma is quite well and happy.”

“His mother was my greatest friend. I can’t bear to think that she’s dead.”

“Poor little boy, it’s dreadful to think of him quite alone in the world. I see he limps.”

“I wanted the boy to have something to remember me by when he grows up.”

“nothing was better than bread and butter for growing lads”

“Think of the grief you’re causing your poor mother in heaven.”

“You needn’t make it worse by sulking,”

But her tears were partly tears of happiness, for she felt that the strangeness between them was gone.

“The boy’s crying as though his heart would break.”

One can serve God in every walk, but we stand nearer to Him.

“I wonder if you’re not oversensitive about your misfortune. Has it ever struck you to thank God for it?”

“Why, this about if you have faith you can remove mountains.”

“I suppose no one ever has faith enough,” he said.

“If it hadn’t been for the money you gave me I should have starved. It was all I had to live on.”

“Oh, I wish to goodness I were twenty-one. It is awful to be at somebody else’s beck and call.”

“If you like to be a perfect sneak you can. After writing to Perkins as you did you’re quite capable of it.”

“Oh, I wish to God I were twenty-one. It is awful to be tied down like this.”

It was cruel to put me under the guardianship of people who know nothing about things.”

“I didn’t mean to be beastly.”

“So you’ve made up your mind to stop playing the fool for a bit, have you?”

“You’ll have a very pleasant time at Oxford. You needn’t decide at once what you’re going to do afterwards. I wonder if you realise how delightful the life is up there for anyone who has brains.”

He asked himself dully whether whenever you got your way you wished afterwards that you hadn’t.

“You must decide for yourself. Pray to Almighty God for help and guidance.”

“Did he tell you so? In America we should call him a pretty fair specimen of a waster.”

They can’t even tell a woman she is charming without looking foolish.”

“I love him. I love him. I love him.”

“You mean that they were very clever and learned men, while you have grave doubts whether I am either?”

“Why, it proves that you believe with your generation. Your saints lived in an age of faith, when it was practically impossible to disbelieve what to us is positively incredible.”

“I don’t see why the things we believe absolutely now shouldn’t be just as wrong as what they believed in the past.”

“I don’t see why one should believe in God at all.”

“I believe in the Whole, the Good, and the Beautiful.”

“You’re the only person who has ever accused you of genius.”

“Well, I know I’m not a Christian and I’m beginning to doubt whether I’m a gentleman,” said Philip.

I am naturally very disappointed, but as you know you can take a horse to the water, but you can’t make him drink.