Cronshaw stopped for a moment to drink. He had pondered for twenty years the problem whether he loved liquor because it made… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself? — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
The passing moment is all we can be sure of; it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it. — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
You will have to learn many tedious things,...which you will forget the moment you have passed your final examination, but in anatomy… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
I was a stray acquaintance whom he had never seem before and would never see again, a wandered for a moment through… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Was it necessary to tell me that you wanted nothing in the world but me?' The corners of his mouth drooped peevishly.… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried [phrase-making] to such a height of perfection and have… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Everyone had some defect, or body or of mind: he thought of all the people he had known (the whole world was… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
You Europeans know nothing about America. Because we amass large fortunes you think we care for nothing but money. We are nothing… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
I travel because I like to move from place to place, I enjoy the sense of freedom it gives me, it pleases… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share Image
Vaguely, as when you are studying a foreign language and read a page which at first you can make nothing of, till a word or a sentence gives you a clue; and on a sudden suspicion, as it were, of the sense flashes across your troubled wits, vaguely she gained an inkling into the workings of Walter's mind. It was… — W. Somerset Maugham Copy Share
The ballet. I saw in the fugitive beauty of a dancer's gesture a symbol of life. It was achieved at the cost… — 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