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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 64579b3 | He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other. | w-somerset-maugham | W. Somerset Maugham | |
| 476502a | A man marries to have a home, some to further their social and aristocratic standing, but also because they don't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing." W. Somerset Maugham" | Young | ||
| 64112a7 | Elliott, the costume too large now for his emaciated frame, looked like a chorus man in an early opera of Verdi's. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 2e47330 | They had grown in three years and were now long-legged, skinny, vivacious little creatures, with little at present of their mother's beauty, but with nice manners and an insatiable curiosity. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 6fd0d0e | I suppose only a Frenchman can appreciate to the full the grace and grandeur of Racine and the music of his verse, but even a foreigner, once he has accustomed himself to the periwigged formality of the style, can hardly fail to be moved by his passionate tenderness and by the nobility of his sentiment. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 2f886a6 | I had myself been to Seville when I was twenty-three and I, too, had liked it. I liked its white, tortuous streets, its cathedral, and the wide-spreading plain of the Guadalquivir; but I liked also those Andalusian girls with their grace and their gaiety, with their dark shining eyes, the carnations in their hair stressing its blackness and by the contrast itself more vivid; I liked the rich color of their skins and the inviting sensuality .. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| d67da99 | He had a pompous manner and the false heartiness of a cheap politician, but his eyes were frightened and unhappy. He was never quite drunk and never quite sober. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| f06fcba | It irks me that I cannot hope with any words of mine to give an idea of the pleasantness of his voice that invested even his most casual utterances with persuasiveness, or of the constant change in his expression, from grave to gently gay, from reflective to playful, that accompanied his thoughts like the ripple of a piano when the violins with a great sweep sing the several themes of a concerto. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 98b12fa | Philip that there were three things to find out: man's relation to the world he lives in, man's relation with the men among whom he lives, and finally man's relation | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 18d326b | The illusion which man has that his will is free is so deeply rooted that I am ready to accept it. I act as though I were a free agent. But when an action is performed it is clear that all the forces of the universe from all eternity conspired to cause it, and nothing I could do could have prevented it. It was inevitable. If it was good I can claim no merit; if it was bad I can accept no censure. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| de4e910 | Heaven knows, I'm the easiest woman in the world to get on with, but I will not be bullied by any man. After all, I have my self-respect to think of. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 16293d9 | El hombre encuentra siempre mas facil sacrificar su vida que aprender la tabla de multiplicar. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| e879803 | contemned | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 77f244a | The experience of life shows that people are constantly doing things which must lead to disaster, and yet by some chance manage to evade the result of their folly. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 2656d5f | Ashenden admiraba la bondad, pero no le ofendia lo innoble. La gente le creia hombre sin corazon porque estudiaba mas que apreciaba a las personas a su alrededor, e incluso de aquellos a quienes sinceramente queria veia con claridad meridiana sus defectos y sus virtudes. Cuando alguien le gustaba, no era porque fuese ciego a sus faltas, las aceptaba con un tolerante encogerse de hombros; o porque les imaginara dotes que no poseian, y tratan.. | w. somerset maugham | ||
| 9236f6f | eschew | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 8b0faf0 | You must let bygones be bygones. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 61e961f | Did Beethoven create his symphonies for his glorification? I don't believe it. I believe he created them because the music in his soul demanded expression and then all he tried to do was to make them as perfect as he knew how. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 46017db | There were legends in the Latin quarter of a time when students of different countries lived together intimately, but this was long since passed, and now the various nations were almost as much separated as in an Oriental city. At | William Somerset Maugham | ||
| 116962c | it has this compensation (among, let us admit, not a few others), that sometimes it gives you the opportunity of seeing what was the outcome of certain events you had witnessed long ago. You had given up the hope of ever knowing what was the end of the story, and then, when you least expected it, it is handed to you on a platter. These | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| a21a243 | The Absolute. Reality. You can't say what it is; you can only say what it isn't. It's inexpressible. It's nowhere and everywhere. All things imply and depend upon it. It's not a person, it's not a thing, it's not a cause. It has no qualities. It transcends permanence and change; whole and part, finite and infinite. It is eternal because its completeness and perfection are unrelated to time. It is truth and freedom. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 31fa478 | I found something wonderfully satisfying in the notion that you can attain Reality by knowledge. In later ages the sages of India in recognition of human infirmity admitted that salvation may be won by the way of love and the way of works, but they never denied that the noblest way, though the hardest, is the way of knowledge, for its instrument is the most precious faculty of man, his reason. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| a82fd1f | But he could not tell what that significance was. It was like a message which it was very important for him to receive, but it was given him in an unknown tongue, and he could not understand. He was always seeking for a meaning in life, and here it seemed to him that a meaning was offered; but it was obscure and vague. He was profoundly troubled. He saw what looked like the truth as by flashes of lightning on a dark, stormy night you might .. | William Somerset Maugham | ||
| fed1590 | I didn't expect you to understand me," he answered. "With your cold American intelligence you can only adopt the critical attitude. Emerson and all that sort of thing. But what is criticism? Criticism is purely destructive; anyone can destroy, but not everyone can build up. You are a pedant, my dear fellow. The important thing is to construct: I am constructive; I am a poet." | William Somerset Maugham | ||
| edc00f2 | He accepted the deformity which had made life so hard for him; he knew that it had warped his character, but now he saw also that by reason of it he had acquired that power of introspection which had given him so much delight. | William Somerset Maugham | ||
| 57ce566 | Philip had received little kindness in his life, and he was touched by the American's desire to help him: once when a cold kept him in bed for three days, Weeks nursed him like a mother. There was neither vice nor wickedness in him, but only sincerity and loving-kindness. It was evidently possible to be virtuous and unbelieving. | William Somerset Maugham | ||
| 2e2e363 | Philip was on friendly terms with the little Chinaman who sat at table with him twice each day. His name was Sung. He was always smiling, affable, and polite. It seemed strange that he should frizzle in hell merely because he was a Chinaman; but if salvation was possible whatever a man's faith was, there did not seem to be any particular advantage in belonging to the Church of England. | William Somerset Maugham | ||
| e3cd515 | Why, it proves that you believe with your generation. Your saints lived in an age of faith, when it was practically impossible to disbelieve what to us is positively incredible." "Then how d'you know that we have the truth now?" "I don't." | William Somerset Maugham | ||
| a0775a9 | If they're beautiful I don't much mind if they're not true. It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as to your sense of the aesthetic. I wanted Betty to become a Roman Catholic, I should have liked to see her converted in a crown of paper flowers, but she's hopelessly Protestant. Besides, religion is a matter of temperament; you will believe anything if you have the religious turn of mind, and if you haven'.. | William Somerset Maugham | ||
| ee2975f | wasn't my fault, it was the circumstances. Can't you forgive me? | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 0852a7a | people talk of beauty lightly, and having no feeling for words, they use that one carelessly, so that it loses its force; and the thing it stands for, sharing its name with a hundred trivial objects, is deprived of dignity. They call beautiful a dress, a dog, a sermon; and when they are face to face with Beauty cannot recognise it. The false emphasis with which they try to deck their worthless thoughts blunts their susceptibilities. Like th.. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 8f7c887 | I loved flying. I couldn't describe the feeling it gave me, I only knew I felt proud and happy. In the air, 'way up, I felt that I was part of something very great and very beautiful. I didn't know what it was all about, I only knew that I wasn't alone any more, by myself as I was, two thousand-feet up, but that I bebfiged. I can't help it if it sounds silly. When I was flying above the clouds and they were like an enormous flock of sheep b.. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| eee13a8 | Philip looked up quickly. His lips tightened. He remembered how for months, trusting in what they told him, he had implored God to heal him as He had healed the Leper and made the Blind to see. "As long as you accept it rebelliously it can only cause you shame. But if you looked upon it as a cross that was given you to bear only because your shoulders were strong enough to bear it, a sign of God's favour, then it would be a source of happin.. | William Somerset Maugham | ||
| cfc9362 | I wasn't frightened for myself; I was indignant; it was the wickedness of it that broke me. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| e01767a | He took you by force-yes, he was drunk at the time. It's not the first time that's happened to a woman and it won't be the last time. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 9750014 | I used to think that one day I should write a really great novel, but I've long ceased even to hope for that. All I want people to say is that I do my best. I do work. I never let anything slipshod get past me. I think I can tell a good story and I can create characters that ring true. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| f5f9417 | It was the period in Germany of Goethe's highest fame. Notwithstanding his rather condescending attitude towards patriotism he had been adopted as the national poet, and seemed since the war of seventy to be one of the most significant glories of national unity. The enthusiastic seemed in the wildness of the Walpurgisnacht to hear the rattle of artillery at Gravelotte. But one mark of a writer's greatness is that different minds can find in.. | William Somerset Maugham | ||
| 38625d9 | He shook his fist at her. He was the mildest of creatures and ventured upon no action of his life without consulting her. "No, Helene, I tell you this," he shouted. "I would sooner my daughters were lying dead at my feet than see them listening to the garbage of that shameless fellow." The play was The Doll's House and the author was Henrik Ibsen." | William Somerset Maugham | ||
| b388389 | The time has passed when he was an object of ridicule, and it is no longer a mark of eccentricity to defend or of perversity to extol him. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 3b8ef37 | To my mind the most interesting thing in art is the personality of the artist; and if that is singular, I am willing to excuse a thousand faults. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 6901fc6 | It is a grotesque misapprehension which sees in art no more than a craft comprehensible perfectly only to the craftsman: art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| caa9756 | The faculty for myth is innate in the human race. It seizes with avidity upon any incidents, surprising or mysterious, in the career of those who have at all distinguished themselves from their fellows, and invents a legend to which it then attaches a fanatical belief. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 52c7faa | His heart went out to them. There was one quality which they had that he did not remember to have noticed in people before, and that was goodness. It had not occurred to him till now, but it was evidently the beauty of their goodness which attracted him. In theory he did not believe in it: if morality were no more than a matter of convenience good and evil had no meaning. He did not like to be illogical, but here was simple goodness, natura.. | William Somerset Maugham | ||
| ad6be97 | There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one's means of livelihood. I have nothing but contempt for the people who despise money. They are hypocrites or fools. Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five. Without an adequate income half the possibilities of life are shut off. The only thing to be careful about is that you do not pay more than a shilling for the shilling you e.. | W. Somerset Maugham |