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82387d3
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We can only guess at the thoughts and emotions of our neighbors. Each one of us is a prisoner in a solitary tower and he communicates with the other prisoners, who form mankind, by conventional signs that have not quite the same meaning for them as for himself.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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b1ca7e1
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After all, it's not my fault. I can't force myself to believe. If there is a God after all and he punishes me because I honestly don't believe in Him I can't help it.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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77fb926
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How much easier life would be if people were all black or all white and how much simpler it would be to act in regard to them!
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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062527b
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Schools are made for the average. The holes are all round, and whatever shape the pegs are they must wedge in somehow. One hasn't time to bother about anything but the average.
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learning
intelligence
schools
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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d74a4f8
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art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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631a6f3
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art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand. But
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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4c834e7
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Have you ever thought of death?" "Why should I? It doesn't matter."
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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a7d2c38
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The important thing is character. It's my character I've got to mould. I'm sure one can do anything with oneself if one tries. It's only a matter of will.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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e06d8af
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I am a man blessed with vivid senses, and I have indulged them with all my soul. I have to pay the penalty now, and I am ready to pay.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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1f6c3b8
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A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves in almost everything that anybody else believes, and he has a very lively sustaining faith in he doesn't quite know what.
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unitarianism
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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47f4a72
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There was a curious sense of apprehension in her heart. He was certainly very handsome. It would be thrilling to be the wife of the Governor of Bengal and very nice to be grand and have the ADCs [Aide de Camps] running about to do one's bidding
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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e98cb50
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Well, Henry, if I were you I wouldn't worry", said the lawyer. "My belief is that your boy's born lucky, and in the long run that's better than to be born clever or rich."
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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80d3d8a
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But the river, though it flowed so slowly, had still a sense of movement and it gave one a melancholy feeling of the transitoriness of things. Everything passed, and what trace of its passage remained? It seemed to Kitty that they were all, the human race, like the drops of water in that river and they flowed on, each so close to the other and yet so far apart, a nameless flood, to the sea. When all things lasted so short a time and nothing..
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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39be2a2
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And if I am not mistaken here is the secret of the greatness that was Spain. In Spain it is men that are the poems, the pictures and the buildings. Men are its philosophies. They lived, these Spaniards of the Golden Age; they felt and did; they did not think. Life was what they sought and found, life in its turmoil, its fervour and its variety. Passion was the seed that brought them forth and passion was the flower they bore. But passion al..
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literature
character
creation-of-man
spaniards
the-golden-age
the-last-word
art
thought
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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510f116
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Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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15c9005
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What he taught was very simple. He taught that we are all greater than we know and that wisdom is the means to freedom. He taught that it is not essential to salvation to retire from the world, but only to renounce the self. He taught that work done with no selfish interest purifies the mind and that duties are opportunities afforded to man to sink his separate self and become one with the universal self.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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385282f
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Charm is essential. In the last two years I've got to know a good many prominent politicians and they've all got it. Some more and some less. But they can't all have it by nature. That shows it can be acquired. It means nothing, but it arouses the devotion of their followers so that they'll do blindly all they're bidden and be satisfied with the reward of a kind word. I've examined them at work. They can turn it on like water from a tap. Th..
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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8a33410
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we are all greater than we know and that wisdom is the means to freedom.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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ad238cd
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I think I can tell you. I've always felt that there was something pathetic in the founders of religion who made it a condition of salvation that you should believe in them. It's as though they needed your faith to have faith in themselves.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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a34701b
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It was a sordid scene. Philip leaned over the rail, staring down, and he ceased to hear the music. They danced furiously. They danced round the room, slowly, talking very little, with all their attention given to the dance. The room was hot, and their faces shone with sweat. It seemed to Philip that they had thrown off the guard which people wear on their expression, the homage to convention, and he saw them now as they really were. In that..
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dance
fate
sordid
pity
horror
pleasure
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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10dd622
|
He was occupied with the forming of a pattern out of the manifold chaos of life, and the materials with which he worked seemed to make preoccupation with pigments and words very trivial. Lawson had served his turn. Philip's friendship with him had been a motive in the design he was elaborating: it was merely sentimental to ignore the fact that the painter was of no further interest to him.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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37f663a
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Act so that every action of yours should be capable of becoming an universal rule of action for all men.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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0a5b23d
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The thought of my chief inspector reading The Waste Land filled me with pleasure. Suddenly he pushed a snapshot toward me.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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27f5f3d
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Philip had a practical outlook and he grew impatient with the theories which resulted in no action.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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d301d8d
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She had no mercy. He looked at her neck and thought how he would like to jab it with the knife he had for his muffin. He knew enough anatomy to make pretty certain of getting the carotid artery. And at the same time, he wanted to cover her pale, thin face with kisses.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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5006c2d
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a novel cannot be made of facts alone; in themselves they are dead things.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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7874811
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A laboratory had been fitted up, army classes were instituted; they all said the character of the school was changing. And heaven only knew what further projects Mr. Perkins turned in that untidy head of his.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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427b3c2
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Thing I've always noticed, people don't commit suicide for love, as you'd expect, that's just a fancy of novelists; they commit suicide because they haven't got any money.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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0f5be10
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We were staggered and immediately on the defensive, for she looked intellectual, and it made us feel shy.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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66b2b0d
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But every well has a bottom and finally your friend will come to the end of what he has to tell you:
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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73daf8c
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Love will be stronger and last longer if there are impediments to its gratification.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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23f7fc3
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He did not like old people, and resented it when he was invited to meet only persons of his own age, and the young he found vapid.
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friendship
sociality
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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8909760
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He did not know how wide a country, arid and precipitous, must be crossed before the traveller through life comes to an acceptance of reality. It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded. It
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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25b6453
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nor was Miss Wilkinson the ideal: he had often pictured to himself the great violet eyes and the alabaster skin of some lovely girl, and he had thought of himself burying his face in the rippling masses of her auburn hair. He could not imagine himself burying his face in Miss Wilkinson's hair, it always struck him as a little sticky.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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c5aa632
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I HAVE NEVER BEGUN a novel with more misgiving. If I call it a novel it is only because I don't know what else to call it.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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5ffdafc
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It gives him spiritual freedom. To him life is a tragedy and by his gift of creation he enjoys the catharsis a purging of pity and terror, Which Aristotle tells is the object of art.
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freedom
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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9a66d9d
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What do the circumstances of your life matter if your dreams make you lord paramount of time and space.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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7779a41
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It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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a2ea2ba
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Acho uma grandissima tolice dizer que pode existir amor sem paixao; as pessoas que afirmam que o amor pode perdurar depois de esgotada a paixao referem-se a outro sentimento, afeicao, bondade, comunhao de gostos e interesses, habito. Principalmente habito. Duas pessoas podem continuar a ter relacoes sexuais por habito, assim como tem fome a hora em que costumam fazer suas refeicoes. Claro que pode haver desejo sem amor. Desejo nao e paixao...
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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c6ce3a3
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Emerson] had a gift of the picturesque phrase, but too often it is empty of meaning. He is a nimble skater who cuts elegant and complicated figures on a surface of frozen platitudes. Perhaps he would have been a better writer if he had not been quite so good a man.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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fe306c9
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He yearned above all things for experience and felt himself ridiculous because at his age he had not enjoyed that which all fiction taught him was the most important thing in life; but he had the unfortunate gift of seeing things as they were, and the reality which was offered him differed too terribly from the ideal of his dreams.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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843fb61
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There is nothing so difficult as to persuade men that they are ignorant. Bertha, exaggerating the seriousness of the affair, thought it charlatanry to undertake a post without knowledge and without capacity. Fortunately that is not the opinion of the majority, or the government of this enlightened country could not proceed.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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a8a6bbb
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I always found Dickens very coarse. I don't want to read about people who drop their aitches.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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cf3556b
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When some incident has shattered the career you've mapped out for yourself, a folly, a crime or a misfortune, you mustn't think you're down and out. It may be a stroke of luck, and when you look back years later you may say to yourself that you wouldn't for anything in the world exchange the new life disaster has forced upon you for the dull, humdrum existence you would have led if circumstances hadn't intervened.
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W. Somerset Maugham |