It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me.
W. Somerset MaughamIt might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.
W. Somerset MaughamA man ought to work. That's what he's here for. That's how he contributes to the welfare of the community.
W. Somerset MaughamWe are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house.
W. Somerset MaughamAdvice to first year medical students: In anatomy, it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.
W. Somerset MaughamI think I was a little disappointed in her. I expected then people to be more of a piece than I do now, and I was distressed to find so much vindictiveness in so charming a creature. I did not realize how motley are the qualities that go to make up a human being. Now I am well aware that pettiness and grandeur, malice and charity, hatred and love, can find place side by side in the same human heart.
W. Somerset Maugham