W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

Love is understood, in a historical way, as one of the great human vocations - but its counterspell has always been infidelity. This terrible, terrible betrayal that can tear apart not only another person, not only oneself, but whole families.

Every man I knew went to bed with Gilda... and woke up with me.

Now I lay me down to cheat on the woman I love so, and if I die between these sheets I pray to God she'll never know.

Cheating love is just as real as un-cheating love.

A woman's best love letters are always written to the man she is betraying.

I think that in any language when you have a real relationship, and there is love and respect between people, infidelity is always something difficult to accept - whether you are Chinese, British, French. I think that is a universal concept... or problem.

When a man leaves his mistress, he runs the risk of being betrayed two or three times daily.

How foolish it is to run away with a man who's already run away with someone else.

Men fell in love with Gilda, but they wake up with me.

I love women. I mean, I'm married, but I used to get in all kinds of trouble.

When I was working on 'Drown' - this was way back in the mid-'90s - I had this idea that I wanted to do another collected stories. I wanted to do another book like 'Drown' that focused specifically on infidelity.

Know this, if someone has cheated on you who truly loves you, they have hurt themselves as much as they have hurt you.

Husbands are chiefly good as lovers when they are betraying their wives.

Men are different. When they are in love they may also have other girlfriends.

Infidelity is horrible - there's nothing worse than that; it's devastating.

I love 'Love Actually' and particularly the story with Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson. I think it's possibly the best exploration of infidelity that's ever been done because it really feels accurate and real.

Because I've been on the receiving end of infidelity, I know how much it hurts.

We must admit that it is quite common that people do have affairs with their leading ladies and men.

A woman one loves rarely suffices for all our needs, so we deceive her with another whom we do not love.

Caesar might have married Cleopatra, but he had a wife at home. There's always something.

My husband and I were very in love, and I had no reason to suspect that his interests lay anywhere else.

To seduce a woman famous for strict morals, religious fervor and the happiness of her marriage: what could possibly be more prestigious?

In mid-life the man wants to see how irresistible he still is to younger women. How they turn their hearts to stone and more or less commit a murder of their marriage I just don't know, but they do.

It's difficult to know what to say to someone whose partner has cheated on them.

For every betrayed woman, there is always the betrayer, man.