W. Somerset Maugham

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

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

"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)"