All Quotes

"She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit..."

"Now it is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it..."

"Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it."

"He loved her so passionately he wanted her to be one soul and one body with him; and he was conscious that here, with those deep roots attaching her to the native life, she would always keep something from him."

"He had a bitter pain in his heart, for he knew that she was still a stranger to him and his hungry love was destined ever to remain unsatisfied."

"I held my breath, for to me there is nothing more awe-inspiring than when a man discovers to you the nakedness of his soul."

"It is very natural that clever young men should be rather odious. They are conscious of gifts that they do not know how to use. They are exasperated with the world that will not recognize their merit. They have something to give, and no hand is stretched out to receive it. They are impatient for the fame they regard as their due."

"Bob Forestier had pretended for so many years to be a gentleman that in the end, forgetting that it was all a fake, he had found himself driven to act as in that stupid, conventional brain of his he thought a gentleman must act. No longer knowing the difference between sham and real, he had sacrificed his life to a spurious heroism."

"I have always been convinced that if a woman once made up her mind to marry a man nothing but instant flight could save him."

"[...] the Eternal turned his attention to the three shades who stood humbly and yet hopefully before him. The quick, with so short a time to live, when they talk of themselves, talk too much; but the dead, with eternity before them, are so verbose that only angels could listen to them with civility."

"'I sometimes think,' said the Eternal, 'that the stars never shine more brightly than when reflected in the muddy waters of a wayside ditch.'"

"She had a very agreeable smile; it did not light up her face suddenly, but seemed rather to suffuse it by degrees with charm. It hesitated for a moment about her lips and then slowly travelled to those great shining eyes of hers and there softly lingered."

"After all, a man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing."

"You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency."

"You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences."

"When you have loved as she has loved, you grow old beautifully."

"It was such a lovely day I thought it was a pity to get up."

"We have long passed the Victorian Era when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby."

"You know that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct."

"I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra."

"Martinis should never be shaken," he said. "They should always be stirred so that the molecules lie sensuously on top of each other . . ."

"I know just where I stand ... in the very first row of the second-raters."

"It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection."

"No gray hairs streak my soul, no grandfatherly fondness there! I shake the world with the might of my voice, and walk—handsome, twentytwoyearold."

"The crown of literature is poetry."

"The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety."

"All the way from Maugham and de Maupassant and Chekhov to Ring Lardner the short story has served to portray the characteristics, the habits, the manners, the morals, the emotions of a nation, a whole people."

"He couldn't write for toffee, bless his heart. He wrote conventional short stories, much inferior to the work of other people. But they were much better than his plays, which were too frightful. He was an extremely interesting man though, not a bit clever or cold or cynical. I know of many affectionate things he did. He had a great capacity for falling in love with the wrong people. His taste seemed to give way under him so extraordinarily sometimes. He fascinated me by his appearance; he was so neatly made, like a swordstick that fits just so. Occasionally his conversation was beautifully funny and quite unmalicious. I object strongly to pictures of Maugham as if he were a second-rate Hollywood producer in the lavish age."

"Then there was Somerset Maugham, a grim figure; rat-eyed; dead man cheeked, unshaven; a criminal I should have said had I met him on a bus."

"Sri Bhagavan went into the room, took a seat and gazed on Mr. Maugham. He regained his senses and saluted Sri Bhagavan. They remained silent and sat facing each other for nearly an hour. The author [Maugham] attempted to ask questions but did not speak. Maj. Chadwick encouraged him to ask. Sri Bhagavan said, “All finished. Heart-talk is all talk. All talk must end in silence only.” They smiled and Sri Bhagavan left the room.’"

"W. Somerset Maugham, Collected Short Stories, I (Penguin Books, 1977)"

"The most important truth which has ever been uttered, and the greatest discovery ever made in the moral world."

"Chorus: O suitably attired in leather boots Head of a traveller, wherefore seeking whom Whence by what way how purposed art thou come To this well-nightingaled vicinity? My object in inquiring is to know. But if you happen to be deaf and dumb And do not understand a word I say, Nod with your hand to signify as much. Alcmaeon: I journeyed hither a Boeotian road. Chorus: Sailing on horseback or with feet for oars? Alcmaeon: Plying by turns my partnership of legs. Chorus: Beneath a shining or a rainy Zeus? Alcmaeon: Mud's sister, not himself, adorns my shoes. Chorus: To learn your name would not displease me much. Alcmaeon: Not all that men desire do they attain."

"The house of delusions is cheap to build, but draughty to live in, and ready at any instant to fall."

"The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic. His opinions are determined not by his reason -- 'the bulk of mankind' says Swift 'is as well qualified for flying as for thinking' -- but by his passions; and the faintest of all human passions is the love of truth. He believes that the text of ancient authors is generally sound, not because he has acquainted himself with the elements of the problem, but because he would feel uncomfortable if he did not believe it; just as he believes, on the same cogent evidence, that he is a fine fellow, and that he will rise again from the dead."

"Three minutes' thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time."

"I rather doubt if man really has much to gain by substituting peace for strife, as you and Jesus Christ recommend. Sic notus Ulixes? do you think you can outwit the resourceful malevolence of Nature? God is not mocked, as St. Paul long ago warned the Galatians. When man gets rid of a great trouble he is easier for a while, but not for long: Nature instantly sets to work to weaken his power of sustaining trouble, and very soon seven pounds is as heavy as fourteen pounds used to be. Last Easter Monday a young woman threw herself in the Lea because her dress looked so shabby amongst the holiday crowd: in other times and countries women have been ravished by half-a-dozen dragoons and taken it less to heart. It looks to me as if the state of mankind always had been and always would be a state of just tolerable discomfort."

"My heart always warms to people who do not come to see me, especially Americans, to whom it seems to be more of an effort."

"Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists? And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists? And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air? Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair."

"Nature, not content with denying to Mr — the faculty of thought, has endowed him with the faculty of writing."

"Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough."

"Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow."

"Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's a ware that will not keep. Up, lad: when the journey's over There'll be time enough to sleep."

"Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride."

"When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, "Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away.""

"When I was one-and-twenty I heard him say again, "The heart out of the bosom Was never given in vain; 'Tis paid with sighs a plenty And sold for endless rue." And I am two-and-twenty And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true."

"Speaking about his Irish/Jewish/Russian ancestors, Harrison Ford said that he is “Irish as a person but I feel Jewish as an actor.”"

"The simplest answer is probably the most truthful: After two years of sitting on my ass during COVID, and waiting quite a few years for Indiana Jones to start, I had not done as much work as I wanted to and I wanted to do different things. So [Shrinking] came along, and then, very quickly after that, 1923 came along. I took the job without a script on both of them, on faith that the people who created the projects were going to deliver me a good script. I really didn’t realize how much work 1923 was going to be, and I absolutely feel it’s worth it. I’m excited to do another season of both."

"I just don't understand the need to name something "the best" or more better than something else. Saying one thing is better than another, one performance is better than another performance — there can't be a contest in this area. I don't understand that."

"I wouldn't be doing this interview if I didn't like you."