I don't understand anything. Life is so strange. I feel like some one who's lived all his life by a duck-pond and suddenly is shown the sea. It makes me a little breathless, and yet it fills me with elation. I don't want to die, I want to live. I'm beginning to feel a new courage. I feel like one of those old sailors who set sail for undiscovered seas and I think my soul hankers for the unknown.
W. Somerset MaughamWhen 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.
W. Somerset MaughamArt should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, depreciating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a common room.
W. Somerset MaughamSuccess. I don't believe it has any effect on me. For one thing I always expected it.
W. Somerset MaughamTo bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give... You will find that people forget the failures of others very quickly.... My last piece of advice is not to let anyone see your mortification, but whatever you fancy people are saying about you to go on with your ordinary life as though nothing unpleasant had happened to you.
W. Somerset Maugham