W. Somerset Maugham
Never pause unless you have a reason for it, but when you pause, pause as long as you can.Collection: Long
The mathematician who after seeing Phedre asked: 'Qu'est que ca prouve?' was not such a fool as he has been generally made out. No one has ever been able to explain why the Doric temple of Paestum is more beautiful than a glass of cold beer except by bringing in considerations that have nothing to do with beauty.Collection: Funny
I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to the universities go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene ... They are scum.Collection: Men
Women are strange little beasts,' he said to Dr. Coutras. 'You can treat them like dogs, you can beat them till your arm aches, and still they love you.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'Of course, it is one of the most absurd illusions of Christianity that they have souls.Collection: Dog
The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.Collection: Beauty
Why did you look at the sunset?' Philip answered with his mouth full: Because I was happy.Collection: Sunset
But Philip was impatient with himself; he called to mind his idea of the pattern of life: the unhappiness he had suffered was no more than part of a decoration which was elaborate and beautiful; he told himself strenuously that he must accept with gaiety everything, dreariness and excitement, pleasure and pain, because it added to the richness of the design.Collection: Beautiful
I know that you're selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven't the nerve of a rabbit, I know you're a liar and a humbug, I know that you're utterly contemptible. And the tragic part is'--her face was on a sudden distraught with pain--'the tragic part is that notwithstanding I love you with all my heart.Collection: Pain
She could not admit but that he had remarkable qualities, sometimes she thought that there was even in him a strange and unattractive greatness; it was curious then that she could not love him, but loved still a man whose worthlessness was now so clear to her.Collection: Greatness
Loving-kindness is the better part of goodness.Collection: Kindness
Art is triumphant when it can use convention as an instrument of its own purpose.Collection: Art
The highest activities of consciousness have their origins in physical occurrences of the brain, just as the loveliest melodies are not too sublime to be expressed by notes.Collection: Sublime
Evil can be condoned only if in the beyond it is compensated by good and god himself needs immortality to vindicate his ways to man.Collection: Men
I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persists.Collection: Appreciation
In business sharp practice sometimes succeeds, but in art honesty is not only the best but the only policy.Collection: Art
When married people don't get on they can separate, but if they're not married it's impossible. It's a tie that only death can sever.Collection: Friendship
Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation.Collection: Community
Do you absolutely despise me, Walter?" "No." He hesitated and his voice was strange. "I despise myself.Collection: Voice
A woman will always sacrifice herself if you give her the opportunity. It is her favourite form of self indulgence.Collection: Love
Freedom! That was the thought that sung in her heart so that even though the future was so dim, it was iridescent like the mist over the river where the morning sun fell upon it. Freedom! Not only freedom from a bond that irked, and a companionship which depressed her; freedom, not only from the death which had threatened, but freedom from the love that had degraded her; freedom from all spiritual ties, the freedom of a disembodied spirit, and with freedom, courage , and a valiant unconcern for whatever was to come.Collection: Spiritual
And I have the sunset, and the Tuscan wine, and the white teeth of the women in Rome. I am a traveler in Romance.Collection: Wine
Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical.Collection: Phrases
I thought it was only in revealed religion that a mistranslation improved the sense.Collection: Atheism
It was like making a blunder at a party; there was nothing to do about it, it was dreadfully mortifying, but it showed a lack of sense to ascribe too much importance to it.Collection: Party
When a woman loves you she's not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she's weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her.Collection: Women
I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to university go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene. It is the white-collar proletariat. They do not go to university to acquire culture but to get a job, and when they have got one, scamp it. They have no manners and are woefully unable to deal with any social predicament. Their idea of a celebration is to go to a public house and drink six beers. They are mean, malicious and envious . They are scum.Collection: Jobs
The humour of Dostoievsky is the humour of a barloafer who ties a kettle to a dog's tail.Collection: Dog
Almost all the people who’ve had the most effect on me I seem to have met by chance, yet looking back it seems as though I couldn’t but have met them.Collection: People
I'd sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.Collection: Looks
People talk of beauty lightly, and having no feeling for words, they use that one carelessly, so that it loses its force; and the thing it stands for, sharing its name with a hundred trivial objects, is deprived of dignity. They call beautiful a dress, a dog, a sermon; and when they are face to face with Beauty cannot recognise it.Collection: Beautiful
The trouble is that thinking looks like loafing. Who wants to pay people for daydreaming?Collection: Inspirational
As the cosmos are in place, so be it with your life.Collection: Life
Oh, it's always the same,' she sighed, 'if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.Collection: Men
A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, he told her, to which she retorted that a proverb was the last refuge of the mentally destitute.Collection: Hands
Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history. Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest.Collection: Home
A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.Collection: Men
No married man's ever made up his mind until he's heard what his wife has got to say about it.Collection: Men
Women are often under the impression that men are much more madly in love with them than they really are.Collection: Love
For my part I cannot believe in a God who is angry with me because I do not believe in him. I cannot believe in a God who is less tolerant than I. I cannot believe in a God who has neither humour nor common sense.Collection: Atheist
Affection is created by habit, community of interests, convenience and the desire of companionship. It is a comfort rather than an exhilaration.Collection: Community
Men have ascribed to God imperfections that they would deplore in themselves.Collection: Men
Charm and nothing but charm at last grows a little tiresome. It's a relief then to deal with a man who isn't quite so delightful but a little more sincere.Collection: Men
What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?Collection: Illusion
You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.Collection: Sex
The spirit is often most free when the body is satiated with pleasure; indeed, sometimes the stars shine more brightly seen from the gutter than from the hilltop.Collection: Stars
She had no mercy. He looked at her neck and thought how he would like to jab it with the knife he had for his muffin. He knew enough anatomy to make pretty certain of getting the carotid artery. And at the same time he wanted to cover her pale, thin face with kisses.Collection: Kissing
With the superciliousness of extreme youth, I put thirty-five as the utmost limit at which a man might fall in love without making a fool of himself.Collection: Falling In Love
The average American can get into the kingdom of heaven much more easily than he can get into the Boulevard St. Germain.Collection: Fashion
Our natural egoism leads us to judge people by their relations to ourselves. We want them to be certain things to us, and for us that is what they are; because the rest of them is no good to us, we ignore it.Collection: People