"Now the world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger."

"He knew that women appreciated neither irony nor sarcasm, but simple jokes and funny stories. He was amply provided with both."

"The isn't only a sunny place for shady people."

"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too."

"She gathered herself together. No one could describe the scorn of her expression or the contemptuous hatred she put into her answer. "You men! You filthy dirty pigs! You're all the same, all of you. Pigs! Pigs!""

"The tragedy of love is indifference."

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

"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.’"

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"The crown of literature is poetry."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

"You bloody fool, you've killed the wrong man."

"At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely."

"Sentimentality is only sentiment that rubs you up the wrong way."

"I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me."

"It was not till quite late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say: "I don't know.""

"Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad."

"She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious."

"If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie."

"What mean and cruel things men can do for the love of God."