W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

There is none who does not lie hourly in the respect he pays to false appearance.

There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face. ... It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth ... into a liar - that I call an achievement.

Irony is the recourse of the weak-minded wimp, I think. I hate bands that deliver their songs with knowing smiles on their faces, so that if those songs fall flat they can say 'Ah well, we never really meant it anyway.' It's so dishonest.

I didn't come to Hollywood. Hollywood came to me. A lot of people wish they could say the things I say. Everyone out here is so phony, it's sickening.

Affectation hath always had a greater share both in the action and discourse of men than truth and judgment have.

Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised.

Ceremony and great professing renders friendship as much suspect as it does religion.

Everybody is full of crap. The coin of the realm is being full of crap. The best people - being full of crap are our leaders and our superstars.

Twas never merry world Since lowly feigning was called compliment.

Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself -- in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity -- is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them.

You seem to be going in for sincerity today. It isn't becoming to you, really — except as an obvious pose. Be as artificial as you are, I advise. There's a sort of sincerity in that, you know. And, after all, you must confess you like that better.

Thus 'tis with all; their chief and constant care Is to seem everything but what they are.

She knows the rituals, she knows how we're supposed to be behaving...But I think these things are impenetrable and fraudulent, and I can't do them without feeling I'm acting.

When he admitted this to me, I found myself almost annoyed. It was as if he'd hidden this part of himself in order to deceive me, pretending-- as do many people I've discovered--to be what he is not. No one I've ever known is what he appears to be on the surface.

Nothing is so tiresome to one's self, as well as so odious to others, as disguise and affectation.

You see how fake it all is. It's not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It's a paper town.

The hypocrite who always plays one and the same part ceases at last to be a hypocrite.

It was one of the most disgusting spectacles I've ever seen-- this white-haired old man, who should have been thinking of the hereafter, standing there lying like an actor.

Truth looks tawdry when she is overdressed.

Affected simplicity is an elegant imposture.

How was your day? If your answer was "fine," then I don't think you were leading.

Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.

It is dishonorable to say one thing and think another; how much more dishonorable to write one thing and think another.

For all cats have this particularity, each and every one, from the meanest alley sneaker to the proudest, whitest she that ever graced a pontiff's pillow — we have our smiles, as it were, painted on. Those small, cool, quite Mona Lisa smiles that smile we must, no matter whether it's been fun or it's been not. So all cats have a politician's air; we smile and smile and so they think we're villains