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8ecb993
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Poor slut, I think she loves me,' said Gray, his eyes closed.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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abf2c15
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Larry sat with his arm stretched out along the top of the front seat. His shirt cuff was pulled back by his position and displayed his slim, strong wrist and the lower part of his brown arm lightly covered with fine hairs. The sun shone goldly upon them. Something in Isabel's immobility attracted my attention, and I glanced at her. She was so still that you might have thought her hypnotized. Her breath was hurried. Her eyes were fixed on th..
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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ee29945
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You rejoice in your freedom, and you feel that at last you can call your soul your own. You seem to walk with your head among the stars. And then, all of a sudden you can't stand it anymore, and you notice that all the time your feet have been walking in the mud.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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e1eb003
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I feel it right to warn the reader that he can very well skip this chapter without losing the thread of such story as I have to tell, since for the most part it is nothing more than the account of a conversation that I had with Larry. I should add, however, that except for this conversation I should perhaps not have thought it worth while to write this book.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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19f5741
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If there's anything I dislike it's the violin", she answered. "Why one should want to hear anyone scrape the hairs of a horse's tail against the guts of a dead cat is something I shall never understand."
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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e2e29a9
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Are you sure you can prevent yourself from falling in love one of these days? Such things do happen, you know, even to the most prudent men.' Simon gave him a strange, one might even have thought a hostile, look. I should tear it out of my heart as I'd wrench out of my mouth a rotten tooth.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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f849cd9
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You poor lonely boy,' she cried, 'it's so dreadful for you to have no parents.' Well, as my mother was a whore, and my father a drunk, I daresay I don't miss much.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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d47db9e
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For myself I can say that, having had every good thing that money can buy, an experience like another, I could part without a pang with every possession I have. We live in uncertain times and our all may yet be taken from us. With enough plain food to satisfy my small appetite, a room to myself, books from a public library, pens and paper, I should regret nothing.
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wealth
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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76b9e17
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He put off the faith of his childhood quite simply, like a cloak that he no longer needed. At first life seemed strange and lonely without the belief which, though he never realized it, had been an unfailing support. He felt like a man who has leaned on a stick and finds himself forced suddenly to walk without assistance. It really seemed as though the days were colder and the nights more solitary. But he was upheld by the excitement; it se..
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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6523471
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He had talked of getting occupation of this sort so long that he had not the face to refuse outright, but the thought of doing anything filled him with panic. At last he declined the opportunity and breathed freely. 'It would have interfered with my work,' he told Philip. 'What work?' asked Philip brutally. 'My inner life,' he answered.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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f7e189e
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self-sacrifice is a passion so overwhelming that beside it even lust and hunger are trifling. It whirls its victim to destruction in the highest affirmation of his personality. The object doesn't matter; it may be worthwhile or it may be worthless. No wine is so intoxicating, no love so shattering, no vice so compelling. When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice hims..
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self-sacrifice
passions
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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0389ca2
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He wondered whether he had done right. He was dissatisfied with himself and with all his circumstances. He asked himself dully whether whenever you got your way you wished afterwards that you hadn't
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W Somerset Maugham |
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d785006
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the sea offers the only broad horizon, and the immense he saw now gave him a peculiar, an indescribable thrill. He felt suddenly elated. Though he did not know it, it was the first time that he had experienced, quite undeluted with foreign emotions, the sense of beauty.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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9c2c836
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There was neither good nor bad there. There were just facts. It was life.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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172c52f
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Our wise old church...has discovered that if you will act as if you believed belief will be given to you; if you pray with doubt, but pray with sincerity, your doubt will be dispelled; if you will surrender yourself to the beauty of that liturgy the power of which over the human spirit has been proved by the experience of the ages, peace will descend upon you.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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2febf8d
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His death had been as futile as his life. He died ingloriously, of a stupid disease, failing once more, even at the end, to accomplish anything.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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ba3a0f5
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I'm not afraid of my fear. It's folly, the Christian argument that you should live always in view of your death. The only way to live is to forget that you're going to die. Death is unimportant. The fear of it should never influence a single action of the wise man. I know that I shall die struggling for breath, and I know that I shall be horribly afraid. I know that I shall not be able to keep myself from regretting bitterly the life that h..
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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51e3c75
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It is hard that a man's exterior should tally so little sometimes with his soul.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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9c63eac
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I have noticed that when I am most serious people are apt to laugh at me, and indeed when after a lapse of time I have read passages that I wrote from the fullness of my heart I have been tempted to laugh at myself. It must be that there is something naturally absurd in a sincere emotion, though why there should be I cannot imagine, unless it is that man, the ephemeral inhabitant of an insignificant planet, with all his pain and all his str..
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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2329f5f
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The man I am writing about is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men so that, long aft..
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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06ab922
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I do not believe that I am a vindictive man, but when the immortal gods take a hand in the matter it is pardonable to observe the results with complacency.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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ed2a238
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When death stood round the corner, taking lives like a gardener digging up potatoes, it was foolishness to care what dirty things this person or that did with his body.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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64429d7
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m'chitelno e da poglednesh edna zhena, koiato si obichal s tsialoto si s'rtse dotolkova, che si iskal vinagi da ia gledash, i izvedn'zh da razberesh, che ti e vse edno, ako ne ia vidish poveche. Tragediiata na liubovta e v bezrazlichieto.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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d4f1bae
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Philip himself asked desperately what was the use of living at all. It all seemed inane. It was the same with Cronshaw: it was quite unimportant that he had lived; he was dead and forgotten; his life seemed to have served nothing except to give a pushing journalist occasion to write an article in a review. And Philip cried out in his soul: 'What is the use of it?' The effort was so incommensurate with the result. The bright hopes of youth h..
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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97628d8
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It looked as though you did not act in a certain way because you thought in a certain way, but rather you thought in a certain way because you were made in a certain way. Truth had nothing to do with it.
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psychology
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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d3f8013
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He lit his pipe again, smiling to himself quietly, with that painful smile of his, as though he were enjoying a joke that hurt him.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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aa66e94
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With infinite patience she prepared to snare and bind me. She wanted to bring me down to her level; she cared nothing for me, she only wanted me to be hers. She was willing to do everything in the world for me except the one thing I wanted: to leave me alone.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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d97e73b
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I don't ask you to forgive me. I don't ask you to love me as you used to love me. But couldn't we be friends?
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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8844239
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When all things lasted so short a time and nothing mattered very much, it seemed pitiful that men, attaching an absurd importance to trivial objects, should make themselves and one another so unhappy.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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108fe31
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Passion is destructive. It destroyed Antony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde, Parnell and Kitty O'Shea. And if it doesn't destroy it dies. It may be then that one is faced with the desolation of knowing that one has wasted the years of one's life, that one's brought disgrace upon oneself, endured the frightful pang of jealousy, swallowed every bitter mortification, that one's expended all one's tenderness, poured out all the riches of one'..
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passion
love
passion-is-destructive
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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a93ea9c
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I don't know what it is that makes someone love you, but whatever it is, it's the only thing that matters, and if it is not there you won't create it by kindness, or generosity, or anything of that sort.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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b6f6946
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The goal is] "liberation from the bondage of rebirth. According to the Vedantists the self, which they call the atman and we call the soul, is distinct from the body and its senses, distinct from the mind and its intelligence; it is not part of the Absolute, for the Absolute, being infinite, can have no parts but the Absolute itself. It is uncreated; it has existed form eternity and when at least it has cast off the seven veils of ignorance..
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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22ff4ba
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What I can do is the only limit of what I may do. Because we are gregarious we live in society, and society holds together by means of force, force of arms (that is the policeman) and force of public opinion. You have society on one hand and the individual on the other: each is an organism striving for self-preservation. It is might against might. I stand alone, bound to accept society and not unwilling, since in return for the taxes I pay ..
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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c0cd4a1
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He had thought of love as a rapture which seized one so that all the world seemed spring-like, he had looked forward to an ecstatic happiness; but this was not happiness; it was a hunger of the soul, it was a painful yearning, it was a bitter anguish, he had never known before.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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636343f
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There is only one way to win hearts and that is to make oneself like unto those of whom one would be loved.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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206b73e
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I respect him. He has brains and character; and that, I may tell you, is a very unusual combination.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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a42d46c
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It's dreadful, isn't it?" "What? Death?" "Yes. It makes everything else seem so horribly trivial. He doesn't look human. When you look at him you can hardly persuade yourself that he's ever been alive. It's hard to think that not so very many years ago he was just a little boy tearing down the hill and flying a kite."
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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0470e20
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The past was finished; let the dead bury their dead.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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862d838
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I was growing stale in London. I was tired of doing much the same thing everyday. My friends pursued their course with uneventfulness; they had no longer any surprises for me, and when I met them I knew pretty well what they would say; even their love-affairs had a tedious banality. We were like tram-cars running on their lines from terminus to terminus, and it was possible to calculate within small limits the number of passengers they woul..
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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878ac01
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I can't afford to let my judgement be clouded by any feeling that I might have for a human being. You are the only person I've ever cared for in the world, Charley. I shan't rest till I know in my bones that if it were necessary to put you against a wall and shoot you with my own hands I could do it without a moment's hesitation and without a moment's regret.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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c9dfff0
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peace of mind: Thou shalt have it only, the answer seemed to come to me, when thou has ceased to desire it.
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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8c5ea14
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The last words he said to me when I bade him good-night were: Tell Amy it's no good coming after me. Anyhow, I shall change my hotel, so she wouldn't be able to find me.' My own impression is that she's well rid of you,' I said. My dear fellow, I only hope you'll be able to make her see it. But women are very unintelligent.
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women
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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644ec21
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The first time he talked in that way he said something that I've never forgotten, because it horrified me; he said that the world isn't a creation, for out of nothing nothing comes, but a manifestation of the eternal nature; well, that was all right, but then he added that evil is as direct a manifestation of the divine as good. They were strange words to hear in that sordid, noisy cafe, to the accompaniment of dance tunes on the mechanical..
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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381002c
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He seemed to see his fellow creatures grotesquely, and he was angry with them because they were grotesque; life was a confusion of ridiculous, sordid happenings, a fit subject for laughter, and yet it made him sorrowful to laugh.
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W. Somerset Maugham |