“You have a hierarchy of values; pleasure is at the bottom of the ladder, and you speak with a little thrill of self-satisfaction, of duty, charity, and truthfulness. You think pleasure is only of the senses; the wretched slaves who… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share
It is pleasure that lurks in the practice of every one of your virtues. Man performs actions because they are good for him, and when they are good for other people as well they are thought virtuous: if he finds… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
“A man thinks it quite natural that he should fall out of love with a woman, but it never strikes him for a moment… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
“A man's work reveals him. In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he wishes the world to accept, but in his book… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither. We must be very humble. We must see the beauty of quietness. We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us. And let us seek the love of simple, ignorant people. Their ignorance is better than all our… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share
“There is no more merit in having read a thousand books than in having ploughed a thousand fields.” — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
“I wanted to live again and again. I was willing to accept every sort of life, no matter what its pain and sorrow; I… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
“His love became a prison from which he longed to escape, but he had not the strength merely to open the door-that was all… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
I did not believe him capable of love. That is an emotion in which tenderness is an essential part, but Strickland had no tenderness either for himself or for others; there is in love a sense of weakness, a desire to protect, an eagerness to do good and to give pleasure--if not unselfishness, at all events a selfishness which marvellously… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share
