The Moon And Sixpence

Quotes

1. But who can fathom the subtleties of the human heart? Certainly not those who expect from it only decorous sentiments and normal emotions.

   p. 154

2. 

   Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history.

   p. 1

3. 

   Men are always the same. Fear makes them cruel.

   p. 204

4. 

   Tahiti is very far away, and I knew that I should never see it again. A chapter of my life was closed, and I felt a little nearer to inevitable death.

   p. 213

5. 

   He made one laugh sometimes by speaking the truth, but this is a form of humour which gains its force only by its unusualness; it would cease to amuse if it were commonly practised.

   p. 157

6. 

   Self-doubt, which is the artist's bitterest enemy.

   p. 153

7. 

   I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.

   p. 79

8. 

   Life isn't long enough for love and art.

   p. 80

9. 

   I had not yet learnt how contradictory is human nature; I did not know how much pose there is in the sincere, how much baseness in the noble, or how much goodness in the reprobate.

   p. 39

10. 

    One of the falsest of proverbs is that you must lie on the bed that you have made. The experience of life shows that people are constantly doing things which must lead to disaster, and yet by some chance manage to evade the result of their folly.

    p. 119

11. 

    Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation.

    p. 54

12. 

    The modern clergyman has acquired in his study of the science which I believe is called exegesis an astonishing facility for explaining things away.

    p. 8

13. 

    The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

    p. 140

14. 

    Whatever anguish she suffered she concealed. She saw shrewdly that the world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willingly avoids the sight of distress.

    p. 61

15. 

    The poignancy which all beauty has.

    p. 87

16. 

    Impropriety is the soul of wit.

    p. 17

17. 

    Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.

    p. 147

18. 

    I reflected, while I chatted with the woman I had been asked to ‘take in’, that civilized man practises a strange ingenuity in wasting on tedious exercises the brief span of his life.

    p. 22

19. 

    I am a little shy of any assumption of moral indignation. There is always in it an element of self-satisfaction which makes it awkward to anyone who has a sense of humour.

    p. 116

20. 

    I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul's good to do each day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed.

    p. 11

21. 

    “A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her,” he said, “but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.”

    p. 142

22. 

    We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us.

    p. 129

23. 

    She was making money. But she could not get over the idea that to earn her living was somewhat undignified, and she was inclined to remind you that she was a lady by birth.

    p. 63

24. 

    It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.

    p. 64

25. 

    I did not then know the besetting sin of woman, the passion to discuss her private affairs with anyone who is willing to listen.

    p. 31

That’s all the quotes.

25 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more