But I am not sure it would contain any short stories. For the short story is a minor art, and it must content itself with moving, exciting and amusing the reader. ...I do not think that there is any (short story) that will give the reader that thrill, that rapture, that fruitful energy which great art can produce.
W. Somerset MaughamCommon sense and nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult.
W. Somerset MaughamThe first duty of a woman is to be pretty, the second is to be well-groomed, and the third is never to contradict.
W. Somerset MaughamArt is triumphant when it can use convention as an instrument of its own purpose.
W. Somerset MaughamVaguely, as when you are studying a foreign language and read a page which at first you can make nothing of, till a word or a sentence gives you a clue; and on a sudden suspicion, as it were, of the sense flashes across your troubled wits, vaguely she gained an inkling into the workings of Walter's mind. It was like a dark and ominous landscape seen by a flash of lightning and in a moment hidden again by the night. She shuddered at what she saw.
W. Somerset Maugham