William Somerset Maugham

It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.

He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.

It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic.

It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late.

“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.”

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

I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing on somebody's else advice.

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.

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

People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.

He was always seeking for a meaning in life, and here it seemed to him that a meaning was offered; but it was obscure and vague. He was profoundly troubled. He saw what looked like the truth as by flashes of lightning on a dark, stormy night you might see a mountain range. He seemed to see that a man need not leave his life to chance, but that his will was powerful; he seemed to see that self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion; he seemed to see that the inward life might be as manifold, as varied, as rich with experience, as the life of one who conquered realms and explored unknown lands.

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