W. Somerset Maugham Believe Quotations

If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?

I did not believe him capable of love. That is an emotion in which tenderness is an essential part, but Strickland had no tenderness either for himself or for others; there is in love a sense of weakness, a desire to protect, an eagerness to do good and to give pleasure--if not unselfishness, at all events a selfishness which marvellously conceals itself; it has in it a certain diffidence.

I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that that is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues.

Success. I don't believe it has any effect on me. For one thing I always expected it.

I cannot believe in a God who has neither humor nor common sense.

It has been said that metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct.

Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives not by truth but by make-believe.

The nature of men and women - their essential nature - is so vile and despicable that if you were to portray a person as he really is, no one would believe you.

The drama is make-believe. It does not deal with truth but with effect.

We didn't think much in the air corps of a fellow who wangled a cushy job out of his C.O. by buttering him up. It was hard for me to believe that God thought much of a man who tried to wangle salvation by fulsome flattery. I should have thought the worship most pleasing to him was to do your best according to your lights.

A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves what everyone else believes.

The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.