A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.
W. Somerset MaughamYou Europeans know nothing about America. Because we amass large fortunes you think we care for nothing but money. We are nothing for it; the moment we have it we spend it, sometimes well, sometimes ill, but we spend it. Money is nothing to us; it's merely the symbol of success. We are the greatest idealists in the world; I happen to think that we've set our ideal on the wrong objects; I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can set before himself is self-perfection.
W. Somerset MaughamI [Death] was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
W. Somerset MaughamIt's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
W. Somerset MaughamWomen are often under the impression that men are much more madly in love with them than they really are.
W. Somerset MaughamThe arguments for immortality, weak when you take them one by one, are no more cogent when you take them together... For my part, I cannot see how consciousness can persist when its physical basis has been destroyed, and I am too sure of the interconnection of my body and my mind to think that any survival of my my consciousness apart from my body would be in any sense a survival of myself.
W. Somerset Maugham