W. Somerset Maugham

Thank God, I can look at a sunset now without having to think how to describe it

I was a stray acquaintance whom he had never seem before and would never see again, a wandered for a moment through his monotonous life, and some starved impulse left him to lay bare his soul. I have in this way learned more about men in a night than I could if I had known them for 10 years. If you are interested in human nature, it is one of the greatest pleasures of travel.

There is only one thing about which I am certain, and this is that there is very little about which one can be certain

I can only guess that it made the world he went back to...strangely without meaning. Though he lived in it, though he even enjoyed it, it remained utterly remote. I think it had lost sense for him. In his heart was the reflection of a lovely dream that he could never quite recall.

Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.

When you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right.

Its a toss-up when you decide to leave the beaten track. Many are called, few are chosen.

For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they are born, the city apartment or farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can't come to know by hearsay.

In business sharp practice sometimes succeeds, but in art honesty is not only the best but the only policy.

We can none of us step into the same river twice, but the river flows on and the other river we step into is cool and refreshing, too

Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.

The well dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice

Marco Polo tells the tale of The Old Man in the Mountains and how he recruits new members to his Band of Assassins by means of drugs, beautiful women, lush gardens, and religious promises. The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.

An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.

The good traveler has the gift of surprise.

I'm only twenty-five. If I've made a mistake I have time to correct it.

Only mediocre people are at the best all the time.

You can never know enough about your characters

Perhaps it would have been possible to see in him a new Prometheus...the hero who for the good of mankind exposes himself to the agonies of the damned...undaunted by failure, by an unceasing effort of courage holding despair at bay, doggedly persistent in the face of self-doubt, which is the artist's bitterest enemy.

"Do you like card tricks?" "No, I hate card tricks," I answered. "Well, I`ll just show you this one." He showed me three.

Genius is talent provided with ideals.