Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull. — W. Somerset Maugham
—What lingers after this line?
The Hidden Flaw in Flawlessness
Maugham’s remark begins with a sharp paradox: what appears most admirable may also be least engaging. Perfection promises polish, balance, and control, yet those same qualities can smooth away surprise, tension, and individuality. In that sense, the ‘grave defect’ is not moral failure but emotional flatness—the absence of the irregularities that make something feel alive. This is why audiences are often drawn less to the impeccable than to the memorable. A flawless surface can inspire respect, but it does not always invite affection. By contrast, a visible crack, hesitation, or contradiction gives the mind something to enter, and from that opening interest begins.
Why Imperfection Creates Interest
From this starting point, the quote suggests that charm often depends on deviation rather than exactness. Human attention is captured by friction: the unexpected note in a melody, the asymmetry in a face, the stray weakness in an otherwise strong character. Without such variation, excellence can become predictable, and predictability easily slides into boredom. Aristotle’s Poetics (c. 335 BC) helps illuminate this idea indirectly, since drama depends on conflict, reversal, and error rather than idealized steadiness. A perfect character offers little movement; an imperfect one can change, struggle, and reveal depth. Thus, what is technically incomplete may be artistically more complete.
Literature’s Preference for the Flawed
Seen through literature, Maugham’s point becomes even clearer. Cervantes’s Don Quixote (1605, 1615) is absurd, deluded, and frequently ridiculous, yet he remains enduringly fascinating because his flaws generate both comedy and pathos. Likewise, Jane Austen’s Emma (1815) begins as clever but misguided, and her errors give the novel its energy and moral shape. By comparison, wholly perfect figures often fade into the background as symbols rather than people. Readers admire them briefly, then move on. Narrative art tends to favor characters whose limitations expose their humanity, because it is through those imperfections that personality becomes dramatic and unforgettable.
Aesthetic Beauty Needs Irregularity
The same principle extends beyond books into art and design. A room arranged with total symmetry, spotless surfaces, and no trace of use may look refined, but it can also feel sterile. Meanwhile, traditions such as Japanese wabi-sabi value weathering, incompletion, and transience, finding beauty precisely where perfection has receded. As a result, objects with slight irregularities often seem warmer and more meaningful than those manufactured into uniform flawlessness. The handmade cup, uneven at the rim, may hold the eye longer than a factory-perfect one because it carries evidence of process and presence. Maugham’s insight, then, speaks not only to judgment but to atmosphere.
The Human Problem With Ideal Standards
Turning from art to daily life, the quote also critiques our obsession with ideal standards. Perfectionism often seeks to eliminate risk, embarrassment, and disorder, yet in doing so it can drain spontaneity from work and relationships. A conversation where every word is measured, or a project revised past vitality, may become technically correct but emotionally lifeless. Psychologists such as Gordon Flett and Paul Hewitt, writing on perfectionism in the late twentieth century, have shown how the pursuit of flawlessness can foster anxiety and rigidity rather than fulfillment. Maugham compresses that insight into epigrammatic form: when nothing is allowed to breathe, nothing truly captivates.
Vitality Lives in the Unfinished
Ultimately, the quote argues for a richer standard than mere perfection. What moves us is often not the absence of defects but the presence of vitality—energy, risk, texture, and surprise. These qualities emerge where control loosens just enough for individuality to appear, whether in a person, a work of art, or a way of living. Therefore, Maugham’s warning is less cynical than liberating. It invites us to value resonance over faultlessness and character over polish. In the end, a small imperfection may save something from dullness by making it human, and therefore worth returning to.
One-minute reflection
What's one small action this suggests?
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