The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
Maugham

You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a
principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
Maugham

He had no talent, but he wrote a book in which his
earnestness and his sincerity, his thoughtfulness and his
integrity, wer so evident that, although it was quite unreadable,
no one could fail to be impressed by it.
Maugham, on Charles Lamb

We got along on just sort of "how do you do" terms.
I remember walking back from a cricket match at Lords in
London, and Maugham came along on the other side.
He looked at me and I looked at him, and we were thinking
the same think: Oh my God, shall we have to stop and talk?
Fortunately, we didn't.
P.G.Wodehouse, on Somerset Maugham

The Americans . . . have invented so wide a range of pithy
and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing
and animated conversation without giving a moment's reflection
to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to
consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.
I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do
anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me.
I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the
conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
maugham

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is
to have nothing whatever to do with it.
Maughm

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from
acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
Maugham

Love is only the dirty trick played on us to achieve
continuation of the species.
Maugham

The common idea that success spoils people by making them
vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous; on the
contrary, it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant,
and kind. Failure makes people cruel and bitter. It is not true
that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that
sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty
and vindictive. Habits in writing as in life are only useful if
they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.
Maugham