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Who really said it

Quotation Is a Serviceable Substitute for Wit

Not George Bernard Shaw — actually W. Somerset Maugham W. Somerset Maugham 1874–1965 · English novelist, playwright and short-story writer
Disputed In copyright

Quote Investigator ↗ traces the line to Maugham’s short story “The Creative Impulse,” where the version revised for the 1931 collection Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular describes a character: “She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit…” The phrase is absent from the story’s first printing in Harper’s Bazar in August 1926, and the tidy standalone epigram passed around under Shaw’s name — and far more often Wilde’s — is a later trimming of Maugham’s sentence, with no evidence either man wrote it.

Last verified 27 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Quotation Is a Serviceable Substitute for Wit” is not George Bernard Shaw. W. Somerset Maugham wrote "She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit…" in "The Creative Impulse," as revised for Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular (Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1931); the phrase is absent from the story's first printing in Harper's Bazar, August 1926. Origin traced by Quote Investigator. — Quotle.info

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to George Bernard Shaw. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of W. Somerset Maugham (original US publisher: Doubleday, Doran and Company)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of W. Somerset Maugham — English novelist, playwright and short-story writer. Theme: "Quotation Is a Serviceable Substitute for Wit". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Quotation Is a Serviceable Substitute for Wit". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Maugham’s sentence, and what happened to it

Story
“The Creative Impulse”
Collection
Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular (Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1931)
First printing
Harper’s Bazar, August 1926 — without the phrase
Wording verified
Quote Investigator, at page 255 of the 1977 Arno Press reprint of the 1931 edition

She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit… the sentence continues

Maugham wrote the line about a character, Mrs. Albert Forrester, and buried it in a much longer sentence that runs on about her thirty years of distinguished acquaintances and her stock of anecdotes. As Quote Investigator observes, that phrasing was awkward if you wanted a concise stand-alone quotation — which is exactly why later versions trimmed it into an epigram.

The 1931 Doubleday, Doran edition, digitised
Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular at the Internet Archive
Quote Investigator: Quotation Is a Serviceable Substitute for Wit

How we verified this

  • August 1926 — “The Creative Impulse” first appears in Harper’s Bazar. Quote Investigator checked that printing on microfilm and reports that the phrase is not in it ↗.
  • 1931 — Maugham revises and expands the story for Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular (Doubleday, Doran and Company), and the clause is there. QI verified the wording at page 255 of a 1977 Arno Press reprint ↗ of that edition; the 1931 volume itself is digitised at the Internet Archive ↗.
  • May 1993 — on the Usenet group alt.quotations, one reader asks whether a different variant, “The ability to quote is a poor substitute for wit,” should go to Shaw or to Wilde; a second reader replies with the “serviceable” wording and credits Maugham. That exchange is the only Shaw connection QI documents ↗.
  • February 1997, then 2007 — the line comes loose from Maugham altogether. QI records a Usenet post crediting Oscar Wilde in February 1997, and by 2007 the compressed form had reached Goodreads, where it is still filed under Wilde with no source given ↗.
In copyright

The sentence reached print in Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular (Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1931), which falls just outside the United States public-domain window: Wikisource notes that Maugham’s works are public domain in the US only where they were published before 1 January 1931 ↗, and lists this collection among the 1931 titles. The clause is quoted here in short form for attribution and commentary.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Four famous names, none of them the author

For a line about quotation standing in for wit, this one has had an unusually busy career being quoted — under at least three names that are not Maugham’s.

George Bernard Shaw No evidence

The phrase does not appear anywhere on Wikiquote’s Shaw page ↗, in its sourced sections or its misattributed ones. The single Shaw link Quote Investigator turned up is a May 1993 post on alt.quotations in which a reader wondered whether a different variant — “The ability to quote is a poor substitute for wit” — belonged to Shaw or to Wilde ↗. A question posted to a newsgroup is not a source.

Oscar Wilde Most common credit

Wilde, not Shaw, is where this line usually lands today. QI dates the Wilde ascription to a February 1997 Usenet post and finds no substantive evidence Wilde said or wrote it ↗; it is nevertheless still served up as Wilde’s, sourceless, on Goodreads ↗.

Voltaire Stray credit

An August 1994 Usenet message credited “The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit” to Voltaire ↗. It did not stick, but it shows how freely the sentence travelled once it was detached from its author.

Maugham — right author, rewritten line Wrong wording

Even the sites that get the author right usually print “The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit,” a rewrite that QI tracks back through 1990s Usenet and a January 1997 newspaper column, not to Maugham’s page. The bare “Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit” is a further compression again. Wikiquote prints what he actually wrote ↗.

Maugham wrote it — not as a maxim, but as a dry aside about a character, in the version of “The Creative Impulse” revised for the 1931 collection Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular. Quote Investigator traced the trail ↗.

Context

Why this one drifted

There is a mechanism behind misattribution, and this quote demonstrates it cleanly. Maugham did not write an epigram. He wrote a subordinate clause — “which is a serviceable substitute for wit” — hung off a description of a minor character, inside a sentence that keeps going for another thirty words about her acquaintances and her anecdotes. Nobody can quote that at a dinner party.

So it got trimmed. First into “The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit,” then into the four-word-shorter “Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.” And once a sentence has been filed down into an epigram, it needs an epigrammatist. Maugham is a novelist; Wilde and Shaw are professional wits. The line migrated to the men it sounded like.

A line about quotation substituting for wit, repeatedly quoted under the names of wittier men.

Read the full story

The 1926-versus-1931 split is the detail that makes this checkable. “The Creative Impulse” ran in Harper’s Bazar in August 1926 without the phrase; Quote Investigator confirmed that on microfilm. Maugham then revised and expanded the story for the 1931 Doubleday, Doran collection, and the clause is in that text, verified by QI at page 255 of a 1977 Arno Press reprint. Any source that pins this line to a Maugham work before 1931 has skipped a step.

Worth noting what the sentence is doing in context. It is not Maugham offering advice about conversation. It is Maugham gently needling Mrs. Albert Forrester, a character whose gift for quotation is being described as a stand-in for a wit she does not have. Read as a maxim it is a tip; read in place it is a barb.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Creativity Knowledge Wisdom

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: Quotation Is a Serviceable Substitute for Witquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation: the 1926 Harper's Bazar printing checked on microfilm, the 1931 revision, and the Usenet trail through Shaw, Voltaire and Wilde.
W. Somerset Maugham on Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Carries the line in its sourced short-stories section under Maugham, with a note that it is often misattributed to George Bernard Shaw or Oscar Wilde.
Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular (1931)archive.org

The digitised Doubleday, Doran 1931 volume that carries the revised story — the edition the wording comes from.
Author: W. Somerset Maughamen.wikisource.org

Lists the 1931 collection and states the US public-domain rule for Maugham's work: published before 1 January 1931.
George Bernard Shaw on Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

The negative check — the phrase appears nowhere on Shaw's page, in the sourced sections or the misattributed ones.
The quote as Goodreads still files itwww.goodreads.com

The compressed wording, credited to Oscar Wilde with no source cited — the version QI traced back to a 2007 posting.

The real author

Who actually wrote it

W. Somerset Maugham

1874–1965 · English novelist, playwright and short-story writer

William Somerset Maugham was an English playwright, novelist and short-story writer, born in Paris in 1874 and died at Nice in 1965. He sold on a scale few literary writers reach — four and a half million copies of his books were bought in the United States during his lifetime — and his sharpest lines tend to sit inside his short stories rather than stand alone as aphorisms. “The Creative Impulse” is one of those stories, a piece in which Maugham made fun of self-conscious stylists — which is roughly what the “serviceable substitute for wit” clause is doing there.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Origin, per Quote Investigator

W. Somerset Maugham, “The Creative Impulse,” in Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular (New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1931). Wording verified by Quote Investigator at page 255 of the 1977 Arno Press reprint of that edition; the phrase does not appear in the story’s first printing, Harper’s Bazar, August 1926.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Quotation Is a Serviceable Substitute for Wit’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/quotation-is-a-serviceable-substitute-for-wit/

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