W. Somerset Maugham

“We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.”

“The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.”

“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.”

“Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.”

“You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to such temptation.'Well, I know I'm not a Christian and I'm beginning to doubt whether I'm a gentleman,' said Philip.”

“They will notdisappoint you, and you will look upon them morecharitably. Men seek but one thing in life—their pleasure”

“Larry has been absorbed, as he wished, into that tumultuous conglomeration of humanity, distracted by so many conflicting interests, so lost in the world's confusion, so wistful of good, so cocksure on the outside, so diffident within, so kind, so hard, so trustful and so cagey, so mean and so generous, which is the people of the United States.”

“In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.”

“Yet magic is no more the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Will, love, and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses; and whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician. Magic has but one dogma, namely, that the seen is the measure of the unseen.”

“Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.”

“Can the law get blood out of a stone? I haven't any money.”

“Act so that every action of yours should be capable of becoming an universal rule of action for all men.”

“I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.”

“The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.”

“Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.”

“A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.”

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

“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.”

“Sentimentality is the only sentiment that rubs you the wrong way.”

“Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less.”