Background Image

...

She Plunged Into A Sea Of Platitudes, And With The Powerful Breast Stroke Of A Channel Swimmer Made Her Confident Way Towards The White Cliffs Of The Obvious.

-W. Somerset Maugham

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

She Plunged Into A

W. Somerset Maugham

...

She Plunged Into A Sea Of Platitudes, And With The Powerful Breast Stroke Of A Channel Swimmer Made Her Confident Way Towards The White Cliffs Of The Obvious.

Views: 4

Topic

More From W. Somerset Maugham

For My Part I Cannot Believe In A God Who Is Angry With Me Because I Do Not Believe In Him. I Cannot Believe In A God Who Is Less Tolerant Than I. I Cannot Believe In A God Who Has Neither Humour Nor Common Sense.

The Americans, Who Are The Most Efficient People On The Earth, Have Carried [phrase-making] To Such A Height Of Perfection And Have Invented So Wide A Range Of Pithy And Hackneyed Phrases That They Can Carry On An Amusing And Animated Conversation Without Giving A Moment’s Reflection To What They Are Saying And So Leave Their Minds Free To Consider The More Important Matters Of Big Business And Fornication.

"do You Like Card Tricks?" "no, I Hate Card Tricks," I Answered. "well, I`ll Just Show You This One." He Showed Me Three.

Few Misfortunes Can Befall A Boy Which Bring Worse Consequence Than To Have A Really Affectionate Mother.

Self-control Might Be As Passionate And As Active As The Surrender To Passion.

Love Is Not Always Blind And There Are Few Things That Cause Greater Wretchedness Than To Love With All Your Heart Someone Who You Know Is Unworthy Of Love.

I've Met So Many People, Often The Scum Of The Earth, And Found Them, You Know, Quite Decent. I Am An Uncomfortable Stranger To Moral Indignation.

Scum Of The Earth

A Man Who Is A Politician At Forty Is A Statesman At Three Score And Ten. It Is At This Age, When He Would Be Too Old To Be A Clerk Or A Gardener Or A Police-court Magistrate, That He Is Ripe To Govern A Country.

There Is Only One Way To Win Hearts And That Is To Make Oneself Like Unto Those Of Whom One Would Be Loved.

The First Duty Of A Woman Is To Be Pretty, The Second Is To Be Well-groomed, And The Third Is Never To Contradict.

Beauty Is An Ecstasy; It Is As Simple As Hunger.

A Man Filled With Meat Turns His Back On The Dry Bones Of Political Doctrine. Fanatical Devotion To The Ruling Party Comes More Readily From The Materially Deprived At A Dinner Party One Should Eat Wisely But Not Too Well, And Talk Well But Not Too Wisely.

If A Man Hasn't What's Necessary To Make A Woman Love Him, It's His Fault, Not Hers.

Love Is Only A Dirty Trick Played On Us To Achieve Continuation Of The Species.

I Like Manual Labor. Whenever I've Got Waterlogged With Study, I've Taken A Spell Of It And Found It Spiritually Invigorating.

There Are Two Good Things In Life - Freedom Of Thought And Freedom Of Action.

No Married Man's Ever Made Up His Mind Until He's Heard What His Wife Has Got To Say About It.

If You'd Ever Had A Grown-up Daughter You'd Know That By Comparison A Bucking Steer Is Easy To Manage. And As To Knowing What Goes On Inside Her - Well, It's Much Better To Pretend You're The Simple, Innocent Old Fool She Almost Certainly Takes You For.

People Who Ask For Your Criticism Want Only Praise.

The Worst Of Having So Much Tact Was That You Never Quite Knew Whether Other People Were Acting Naturally Or Being Tactful Too. [the Human Element]

She Says It's Really Not Very Flattering To Her That The Women Who Fall In Love With Her Husband Are So Uncommonly Second-rate.

Falling In Love

Art Should Be Appreciated With Passion And Violence, Not With A Tepid, Depreciating Elegance That Fears The Censoriousness Of A Common Room.

There Is No Need For The Writer To Eat A Whole Sheep To Be Able To Tell You What Mutton Tastes Like. It Is Enough If He Eats A Cutlet. But He Should Do That.

You've Been Brought Up Like A Gentleman And A Christian, And I Should Be False To The Trust Laid Upon Me By Your Dead Father And Mother If I Allowed You To Expose Yourself To Such Temptation.' Well, I Know I'm Not A Christian And I'm Beginning To Doubt Whether I'm A Gentleman,' Said Philip.

To Acquire The Habit Of Reading Is To Construct For Yourself A Refuge From Almost All The Miseries Of Life.

I've Always Been Interested In People, But I've Never Liked Them.

She Had A Pretty Gift For Quotation, Which Is A Serviceable Substitute For Wit.

The World In General Doesn't Know What To Make Of Originality; It Is Startled Out Of Its Comfortable Habits Of Thought, And Its First Reaction Is One Of Anger.

Almost All The People Who’ve Had The Most Effect On Me I Seem To Have Met By Chance, Yet Looking Back It Seems As Though I Couldn’t But Have Met Them.

I Made Up My Mind Long Ago That Life Was Too Short To Do Anything For Myself That I Could Pay Others To Do For Me.

Writing Is A Wholetime Job: No Professional Writer Can Afford Only To Write When He Feels Like It.

I Do Not Believe They Are Right Who Say That The Defects Of Famous Men Should Be Ignored. I Think It Is Better That We Should Know Them. Then, Though We Are Conscious Of Having Faults As Glaring As Theirs, We Can Believe That That Is No Hindrance To Our Achieving Also Something Of Their Virtues.

The Audience Is A Very Curious Animal. It Is Shrewd Rather Than Intelligent. Its Mental Capacity Is Less Than That Of Its Most Intellectual Members.

Of All These The Richest In Beauty Is The Beautiful Life. That Is The Perfect Work Of Art. ~waddington

Art, Unless It Leads To Right Action, Is No More Than The Opium Of An Intelligentsia.

What Do We Any Of Us Have But Our Illusions? And What Do We Ask Of Others But That We Be Allowed To Keep Them?

I Don't Think Of The Past. The Only Thing That Matters Is The Everlasting Present.

The Humorist Has A Good Eye For The Humbug; He Does Not Always Recognize The Saint.

The World Is Quickly Bored By The Recital Of Misfortune, And Willing Avoids The Sight Of Distress.

It's Always Difficult To Make Conversation With A Drunk, And There's No Denying It, The Sober Are At A Disadvantage With Him.

The Great Tragedy Of Life Is Not That Men Perish, But That They Cease To Love.

But There Are People Who Take Salt With Their Coffee. They Say It Gives A Tang, A Savour, Which Is Peculiar And Fascinating. In The Same Way There Are Certain Places, Surrounded By A Halo Of Romance, To Which The Inevitable Disillusionment You Experience On Seeing Them Gives A Singular Spice. You Had Expected Something Wholly Beautiful And You Get An Impression Which Is Infinitely More Complicated Than Any That Beauty Can Give You. It Is The Weakness In The Character Of A Great Man Which May Make Him Less Admirable But Certainly More Interesting. Nothing Had Prepared Me For Honolulu.

The Common Idea That Success Spoils People By Making Them Vain, Egotistic And Self-complacent Is Erroneous; On The Contrary It Makes Them, For The Most Part, Humble, Tolerant And Kind.

Congratulations

Beauty Is An Ecstasy; It Is As Simple As Hunger. There Is Really Nothing To Be Said About It. It Is Like The Perfume Of A Rose: You Can Smell It And That Is All.

It Is Dangerous To Let The Public Behind The Scenes. They Are Easily Disillusioned And Then They Are Angry With You, For It Was The Illusion They Loved.

Behind The Scenes

Refecting On The High Divorce Rate In America As Contrasted With England "american Women Expect To Find In Their Husbands A Perfection That English Women Only Hope To Find In Their Butlers

Have Common Sense And Stick To The Point.

Perhaps Some Deep-rooted Atavism Urges The Wanderer Back To Lands Which His Ancestors Left In The Dim Beginnings Of History. Sometimes A Man Hits Upon A Place To Which He Mysteriously Feels That He Belongs. Here Is The Home He Sought, And He Will Settle Amid Scenes That He Has Never Seen Before, Among Men He Has Never Known, As Though They Were Familiar To Him From His Birth. Here At Last He Finds Rest.

A Man Marries To Have A Home, But Also Because He Doesn't Want To Be Bothered With Sex And All That Sort Of Thing.

The Mathematician Who After Seeing Phedre Asked: 'qu'est Que Ca Prouve?' Was Not Such A Fool As He Has Been Generally Made Out. No One Has Ever Been Able To Explain Why The Doric Temple Of Paestum Is More Beautiful Than A Glass Of Cold Beer Except By Bringing In Considerations That Have Nothing To Do With Beauty.

You Know, The Philistines Have Long Since Discarded The Rack And Stake As A Means Of Suppressing The Opinions They Feared: They've Discovered A Much More Deadly Weapon Of Destruction -- The Wisecrack.

One Can Be Very Much In Love With A Woman Without Wishing To Spend The Rest Of One's Life With Her.

A Dictator Must Fool All The People All The Time And There's Only One Way To Do That, He Must Also Fool Himself.

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.

There Are Many Foolish People In The World And When A Man In A Rather High Position Puts On No Frills, Slaps Them On The Back, And Tells Them He'll Do Anything In The World For Them, They Are Very Likely To Think Him Clever.

It Is Astonishing How Many Books I Find There Is No Need For Me To Read At All.

It's Asking A Great Deal That Things Should Appeal To Your Reason As Well As Your Sense Of The Aesthetic. - Of Human Bondage

A State Of Reverie Does Not Avoid Reality, It Accedes To Reality.

The Ideal Has Many Names, And Beauty Is But One Of Them.

On The Earth, Satellite Of A Star Speeding Through Space, Living Things Had Arisen Under The Influence Of Conditions Which Were Part Of The Planet's History; And As There Had Been A Beginning Of Life Upon It, So, Under The Influence Of Other Conditions, There Would Be An End: Man, No More Significant Than Other Forms Of Life, Had Come Not As The Climax Of Creation But As A Physical Reaction To The Environment.

The Tragedy Of Love Is Not Death Or Separation. How Long Do You Think It Would Have Been Before One Or Other Of Them Ceased To Care? Oh, It Is Dreadfully Bitter To Look At A Woman Whom You Have Loved With All Your Heart And Soul, So That You Felt You Could Not Bear To Let Her Out Of Your Sight, And Realize That You Would Not Mind If You Never Saw Her Again. The Tragedy Of Love Is Indifference.

I'm Not Only My Spirit Buy My Body, And Who Can Decide How Much I, My Individual Self, Am Conditioned By The Accident Of My Body? Would Byron Have Been Byron But For His Club Foot, Or Dostoyevsky Dostoyevsky Without His Epilepsy?

Nothing In The World Is Permanent, And We’re Foolish When We Ask Anything To Last, But Surely We’re Still More Foolish Not To Take Delight In It While We Have It.

Enjoy It While It Lasts

Men Seek But One Thing In Life - Their Pleasure.

It Is Pleasure That Lurks In The Practice Of Every One Of Your Virtues. Man Performs Actions Because They Are Good For Him, And When They Are Good For Other People As Well They Are Thought Virtuous: If He Finds Pleasure In Helping Others He Is Benevolent; If He Finds Pleasure In Working For Society He Is Public-spirited; But It Is For Your Private Pleasure That You Give Twopence To A Beggar As Much As It Is For My Private Pleasure That I Drink Another Whiskey And Soda. I, Less Of A Humbug Than You, Neither Applaud Myself For My Pleasure Nor Demand Your Admiration.

Anyone Can Tell The Truth, But Only Very Few Of Us Can Make Epigrams.

Telling The Truth

The Artist Can Within Limits Make What He Likes Of His Life... It Is Only The Artist, And Maybe The Criminal, Who Can Make His Own.

I Now, Weak, Old, Diseased, Poor, Dying, Hold Still My Soul In My Hands, And I Regret Nothing.

When I Was Young I Had An Elderly Friend Who Used Often To Ask Me To Stay With Him In The Country. He Was A Religious Man And He Read Prayers To The Assembled Household Every Morning. But He Had Crossed Out In Pencil All The Passages That Praised God. He Said That There Was Nothing So Vulgar As To Praise People To Their Faces And, Himself A Gentleman, He Could Not Believe That God Was So Ungentlemanly As To Like It.

He Exulted In The Possession Of Himself Once More; He Realized How Much Of The Delight Of The World He Had Lost When He Was Absorbed In That Madness Which They Called Love; He Had Had Enough Of It; He Did Not Want To Be In Love Anymore If Love Was That.

It Has Been Said That Good Prose Should Resemble The Conversation Of A Well-bred Man.

There Is No Explanation For Evil. It Must Be Looked Upon As A Necessary Part Of The Order Of The Universe. To Ignore It Is Childish, To Bewail It Senseless.

Just As The Painter Thinks With His Brush And Paints The Novelist Thinks With His Story.

The Officers Saluted As She Passed And Gravely Bowed. They Walked Back Across The Courtyard And Got Into Their Chairs. She Saw Waddington Light A Cigarette. A Little Smoke Lost In The Air, That Was The Life Of A Man.

Loving-kindness Is The Better Part Of Goodness. It Lends Grace To The Sterner Qualities Of Which This Consists.

It Is Not True That Suffering Ennobles The Character; Happiness Does That Sometimes, But Suffering For The Most Part, Makes Men Petty And Vindictive.

...i Couldn't But Surmise That The Devil, Looking At The Cruel Wars That Christianity Has Occasioned, The Persecutions, The Tortures Christian Has Inflicted On Christian, The Unkindness, The Hypocracy, The Intolerance, Must Consider The Balance Sheet With Complacency. And When He Remembers That It Has Laid Upon Mankind The Bitter Burden Of The Sense Of Sin That Has Darkened The Beauty Of The Starry Night And Cast A Baleful Shadow On The Passing Plesures Of A World To Be Enjoyed, He Must Chuckle As He Murmurs: Give The Devil His Due.

But I Am Not Sure It Would Contain Any Short Stories. For The Short Story Is A Minor Art, And It Must Content Itself With Moving, Exciting And Amusing The Reader. ...i Do Not Think That There Is Any (short Story) That Will Give The Reader That Thrill, That Rapture, That Fruitful Energy Which Great Art Can Produce.

To Bear Failure With Courage Is The Best Proof Of Character That Anyone Can Give... You Will Find That People Forget The Failures Of Others Very Quickly.... My Last Piece Of Advice Is Not To Let Anyone See Your Mortification, But Whatever You Fancy People Are Saying About You To Go On With Your Ordinary Life As Though Nothing Unpleasant Had Happened To You.

She [sadie Thompson] Gathered Herself Together. No One Could Describe The Scorn Of Her Expression Or The Contemptuous Hatred She Put Into Her Answer. "you Men! You Filthy Dirty Pigs! You're All The Same, All Of You. Pigs! Pigs!"

It Requires The Feminine Temperament To Repeat The Same Thing Three Times With Unabated Zest.

No Action Is In Itself Good Or Bad, But Only Such According To Convention.

Comedy Appeals To The Collective Mind Of The Audience And This Grows Fatigued; While Farce Appeals To A More Robust Organ, Their Collective Belly.

There Are Men Whose Sense Of Humour Is So Ill Developed That They Still Bear A Grudge Against Copernicus Because He Dethroned Them From The Central Position In The Universe. They Feel It A Personal Affront That They Can No Longer Consider Themselves The Pivot Upon Which Turns The Whole Of Created Things.

The Ballet. I Saw In The Fugitive Beauty Of A Dancer's Gesture A Symbol Of Life. It Was Achieved At The Cost Of Unending Effort But, With All The Forces Of Gravity Against It, A Fleeting Poise In Mid-air, A Lovely Attitude Worthy To Be Made Immortal In A Bas-relief, It Was Lost As Soon As It Was Gained And There Remained No More Than The Memory Of An Exquisite Emotion. So Life, Lived Variously And Largely, Becomes A Work Of Art Only When Brought To Its Beautiful Conclusion And Is Reduced To Nothingness In The Moment When It Arrives At Perfection.

And I Have The Sunset, And The Tuscan Wine, And The White Teeth Of The Women In Rome. I Am A Traveler In Romance.

When We Come To Judge Others It Is Not By Ourselves As We Really Are That We Judge Them, But By An Image That We Have Formed Of Ourselves From Which We Have Left Out Everything That Offends Our Vanity Or Would Discredit Us In The Eyes Of The World.

Common Sense And Nature Will Do A Lot To Make The Pilgrimage Of Life Not Too Difficult.

The Subjunctive Mood Is In Its Death Throes, And The Best Thing To Do Is To Put It Out Of Its Misery As Soon As Possible.

The Great American Novel Has Not Only Already Been Written, It Has Already Been Rejected.

Art For Art's Sake Makes No More Sense Than Gin For Gin's Sake.

A Unitarian Very Earnestly Disbelieves What Everyone Else Believes.

Beauty Is Something Wonderful And Strange That The Artist Fashions Out Of The Chaos Of The World In The Torment Of His Soul.

To Write Simply Is As Difficult As To Be Good.

Follow Your Inclinations With Due Regard To The Policeman Round The Corner.

Why Should You Think That Beauty, Which Is The Most Precious Thing In The World, Lies Like A Stone On The Beach For The Careless Passer-by To Pick Up Idly? Beauty Is Something Wonderful And Strange That The Artist Fashions Out Of The Chaos Of The World In The Torment Of His Soul. And When He Has Made It, It Is Not Given To All To Know It. To Recognize It You Must Repeat The Adventure Of The Artist. It Is A Melody That He Sings To You, And To Hear It Again In Your Own Heart You Want Knowledge And Sensitiveness And Imagination.

The Average American Can Get Into The Kingdom Of Heaven Much More Easily Than He Can Get Into The Boulevard St. Germain.

The Tragedy Of Love Is Indifference.

The Only Important Thing In A Book Is The Meaning That It Has For You.

I Do Not Think You Want Too Much Sincerity In Society. It Would Be Like An Iron Girder In A House Of Cards.

Advice To First Year Medical Students: In Anatomy, It Is Better To Have Learned And Lost Than Never To Have Learned At All.

You Are Not Angry With People When You Laugh At Them. Humour Teaches Tolerance, And The Humorist, With A Smile And Perhaps A Sigh, Is More Likely To Shrug His Shoulders Than To Condemn.

It Is An Illusion That Youth Is Happy, An Illusion Of Those Who Have Lost It; But The Young Know They Are Wretched For They Are Full Of The Truthless Ideals Which Have Been Instilled In Them, And Each Time They Come Into Contact With The Real, They Are Bruised And Wounded.

If You Can Tell Stories, Create Characters, Devise Incidents, And Have Sincerity And Passion, It Doesn't Matter A Damn How You Write.

Some Of Us Look For The Way In Opium And Some In God, Some Of Us In Whiskey And Some In Love. It Is All The Same Way And It Leads Nowhither.

The 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.

Art Is Triumphant When It Can Use Convention As An Instrument Of Its Own Purpose.

Are You Sure You Can Prevent Yourself From Falling In Love One Of These Days? Such Things Do Happen, You Know, Even To The Most Prudent Men.' Simon Gave Him A Strange, One Might Even Have Thought A Hostile, Look. I Should Tear It Out Of My Heart As I'd Wrench Out Of My Mouth A Rotten Tooth.

Falling In Love

It Is Good To Be On Your Guard Against An Englishman Who Speaks French Perfectly; He Is Very Likely To Be A Card-sharper Or An Attache In The Diplomatic Service.

The Last Words He Said To Me When I Bade Him Good-night Were: Tell Amy It's No Good Coming After Me. Anyhow, I Shall Change My Hotel, So She Wouldn't Be Able To Find Me.' My Own Impression Is That She's Well Rid Of You,' I Said. My Dear Fellow, I Only Hope You'll Be Able To Make Her See It. But Women Are Very Unintelligent.

We Who Are Of Mature Age Seldom Suspect How Unmercifully And Yet With What Insight The Very Young Judge Us.

Affection Is Created By Habit, Community Of Interests, Convenience And The Desire Of Companionship. It Is A Comfort Rather Than An Exhilaration.

We Know Our Friends By Their Defects Rather Than By Their Merits.

The Good Traveler Has The Gift Of Surprise.

It Must Be That There Is Something Naturally Absurd In A Sincere Emotion, Though Why There Should Be I Cannot Imagine, Unless It Is That Man, The Ephemeral Inhabitant Of An Insignificant Planet, With All His Pain And All His Striving Is But A Jest In An Eternal Mind.

There Was An Immeasurable Distance Between The Quick And The Dead: They Did Not Seem To Belong To The Same Species; And It Was Strange To Think That But A Little While Before They Had Spoken And Moved And Eaten And Laughed.

The Crown Of Literature Is Poetry.

I Do Not Confer Praise Or Blame: I Accept. I Am The Measure Of All Things. I Am The Center Of The World.

It Is Well Known That Beauty Does Not Look With A Good Grace On The Timid Advances Of Humour.

A God That Can Be Understood Is No God. Who Can Explain The Infinite In Words?

I Thought It Was Only In Revealed Religion That A Mistranslation Improved The Sense.

We Find Things Beautiful Because We Recognize Them And Contrariwise We Find Things Beautiful Because Their Novelty Surprises Us.

It Is An Illusion That Youth Is Happy, An Illusion Of Those Who Have Lost It.

If A Nation Values Anything More Than Freedom, It Will Lose Its Freedom; And The Irony Of It Is That If It Is Comfort Or Money That It Values More, It Will Lose That Too.

Libertarian Party

I Don't Know Why It Is That The Religious Never Ascribe Common Sense To God.

At A Dinner Party One Should Eat Wisely But Not Too Well, And Talk Well But Not Too Wisely.

She Alone Had Been Blind To His Merit. Why? Because He Loved Her And She Did Not Love Him. What Was It In The Human Heart That Made You Despise A Man Because He Loved You?

D'you Call Life A Bad Job? Never! We've Had Our Ups And Downs, We've Had Our Struggles, We've Always Been Poor, But It's Been Worth It, Ay, Worth It A Hundred Times I Say When I Look Round At My Children.

There Are Few Things So Pleasant As A Picnic Eaten In Perfect Comfort.

The Riviera Isn't Only A Sunny Place For Shady People.

It Is Cruel To Discover One's Mediocrity Only When It Is Too Late. It Does Not Improve The Temper.

It Has Amazed Me That The Most Incongruous Traits Should Exist In The Same Person And, For All That, Yield A Plausible Harmony.

I'm Afraid You've Thought Me A Bigger Fool Than I Am.

It's No Good Trying To Keep Up Old Friendships. It's Painful For Both Sides. The Fact Is, One Grows Out Of People, And The Only Thing Is To Face It.

When I Read A Book I Seem To Read It With My Eyes Only, But Now And Then I Come Across A Passage, Perhaps Only A Phrase, Which Has A Meaning For Me, And It Becomes Part Of Me.

There In The Mist, Enormous, Majestic, Silent And Terrible, Stood The Great Wall Of China. Solitarily, With The Indifference Of Nature Herself, It Crept Up The Mountain Side And Slipped Down To The Depth Of The Valley.

When She Liked Anyone It Was Quite Natural For Her To Go To Bed With Him. She Never Thought Twice About It. It Was Not Vice; It Wasn't Lasciviousness; It Was Her Nature. She Gave Herself As Naturally As The Sun Gives Heat Or The Flowers Their Perfume. It Was A Pleasure To Her And She Liked To Give Pleasure To Others.

Has It Occurred To You That Transmigration Is At Once An Explanation And A Justification Of The Evil Of The World? If The Evils We Suffer Are The Result Of Sins Committed In Our Past Lives, We Can Bear Them With Resignation And Hope That If In This One We Strive Toward Virtue Out Future Lives Will Be Less Afflicted.

Its A Toss-up When You Decide To Leave The Beaten Track. Many Are Called, Few Are Chosen.

A Good Style Should Show No Signs Of Effort. What Is Written Should Seem A Happy Accident.

What Has Influenced My Life More Than Any Other Single Thing Has Been My Stammer. Had I Not Stammered I Would Probably... Have Gone To Cambridge As My Brothers Did, Perhaps Have Become A Don And Every Now And Then Published A Dreary Book About French Literature.

This Love Was A Torment, And He Resented Bitterly The Subjugation In Which It Held Him; He Was A Prisoner And He Longed For Freedom. Sometimes He Awoke In The Morning And Felt Nothing; His Soul Leaped, For He Thought He Was Free; He Loved No Longer; But In A Little While, As He Grew Wide Awake, The Pain Settled In His Heart, And He Knew That He Was Not Cured Yet.

Considering How Foolishly People Act And How Pleasantly They Prattle, Perhaps It Would Be Better For The World If They Talked More And Did Less.

People Ask For Criticism, But They Only Want Praise.

I Happen To Think 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.

Old Age Is Ready To Undertake Tasks That Youth Shirked Because They Would Take Too Long.

There Is No Object To Life. To Nature Nothing Matters But The Continuation Of The Species.

In Heaven, When The Blessed Use The Telephone They Will Say What They Have To Say And Not A Word Besides.

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

They Say A Woman Always Remembers Her First Lover With Affection; But Perhaps She Does Not Always Remember Him.

Thank God, I Can Look At A Sunset Now Without Having To Think How To Describe It

He Found That It Was Easy To Make A Heroic Gesture, But Hard To Abide By Its Results.

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.

Evil Can Be Condoned Only If In The Beyond It Is Compensated By Good And God Himself Needs Immortality To Vindicate His Ways To Man.

The Secret To Life Is Meaningless Unless You Discover It Yourself.

Love Is What Happens To Men And Women Who Don't Know Each Other.

I Always Find It More Difficult To Say The Things I Mean Than The Things I Don't.

In Religion Above All Things The Only Thing Of Use Is An Objective Truth. The Only God That Is Of Use Is A Being Who Is Personal, Supreme And Good, And Whose Existence Is As Certain As That Two And Two Make Four.

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.

A Good Story Is Obviously A Difficult Thing To Invent, But Its Difficulty Is A Poor Reason For Despising It.

I Am Told That Today Rather More Than 60 Per Cent Of The Men Who Go To The Universities Go On A Government Grant. This Is A New Class That Has Entered Upon The Scene ... They Are Scum.

In The Country The Darkness Of Night Is Friendly And Familiar, But In A City, With Its Blaze Of Lights, It Is Unnatural, Hostile And Menacing. It Is Like A Monstrous Vulture That Hovers, Biding Its Time.

As Lovers, The Difference Between Men And Women Is That Women Can Love All Day Long, But Men Only At Times.

It Is Clear That Men Accept An Immediate Pain Rather Than An Immediate Pleasure, But Only Because They Expect A Greater Pleasure In The Future. Often The Pleasure Is Illusory, But Their Error In Calculation Is No Refutation Of The Rule.

I Am Afraid Of People With Too Much Charm. They Devour You. In The End You Are Made A Sacrifice To The Exercise Of Their Fascinating Gift And Their Insincerity.

Freedom! That Was The Thought That Sung In Her Heart So That Even Though The Future Was So Dim, It Was Iridescent Like The Mist Over The River Where The Morning Sun Fell Upon It. Freedom! Not Only Freedom From A Bond That Irked, And A Companionship Which Depressed Her; Freedom, Not Only From The Death Which Had Threatened, But Freedom From The Love That Had Degraded Her; Freedom From All Spiritual Ties, The Freedom Of A Disembodied Spirit, And With Freedom, Courage , And A Valiant Unconcern For Whatever Was To Come.

Why Did You Look At The Sunset?' Philip Answered With His Mouth Full: Because I Was Happy.

When You Choose Your Friends, Don't Be Short-changed By Choosing Personality Over Character.

Tolerance Is Another Word For Indifference.

The Artist Produces For The Liberation Of His Soul. It Is His Nature To Create As It Is The Nature Of Water To Run Down The Hill.

When Married People Don't Get On They Can Separate, But If They're Not Married It's Impossible. It's A Tie That Only Death Can Sever.

The Most Useful Thing About A Principle Is That It Can Always Be Sacrificed To Expediency.

She Was A Fool And He Knew It And Because He Loved Her It Had Made No Difference.

She Could Not Admit But That He Had Remarkable Qualities, Sometimes She Thought That There Was Even In Him A Strange And Unattractive Greatness; It Was Curious Then That She Could Not Love Him, But Loved Still A Man Whose Worthlessness Was Now So Clear To Her.

It Does The Heart Good To Look At You.

If It Is Necessary Sometimes To Lie To Others, It Is Always Despicable To Lie To Oneself.

She Had No Mercy. He Looked At Her Neck And Thought How He Would Like To Jab It With The Knife He Had For His Muffin. He Knew Enough Anatomy To Make Pretty Certain Of Getting The Carotid Artery. And At The Same Time He Wanted To Cover Her Pale, Thin Face With Kisses.

Each One Of Us Is Alone In The World. He Is Shut In A Tower Of Brass, And Can Communicate With His Fellows Only By Signs, And The Signs Have No Common Value, So That Their Sense Is Vague And Uncertain. We Seek Pitifully To Convey To Others The Treasures Of Our Heart, But They Have Not The Power To Accept Them, And So We Go Lonely, Side By Side But Not Together, Unable To Know Our Fellows And Unknown By Them.

It's No Use Crying Over Spilt Milk, Because All Of The Forces Of The Universe Were Bent On Spilling It.

I Knew That Suffering Did Not Enoble; It Degraded. It Made Men Selfish, Petty And Suspicious. It Absorbed Them In Small Things...it Made Them Less Than Men; And I Wrote Ferociously That We Learn Resignation Not By Our Own Suffering, But By The Suffering Of Others.

Suffering Of Others

We Do Not Write As We Want, But As We Can.

It's Very Hard To Be A Gentleman And A Writer.

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.

Writing Is The Supreme Solace.

Dying Is The Most Hellishly Boresome Experience In The World! Particularly When It Entails Dying Of 'natural Causes'.

I Never Spend More Than One Hour In A Gallery. That Is As Long As One's Power Of Appreciation Persists.

No One Can Write A Best Seller By Trying To. He Must Write With Complete Sincerity; The Clichés That Make You Laugh, The Hackneyed Characters, The Well-worn Situations, The Commonplace Story That Excites Your Derision, Seem Neither Hackneyed, Well Worn Nor Commonplace To Him. ... The Conclusion Is Obvious: You Cannot Write Anything That Will Convince Unless You Are Yourself Convinced. The Best Seller Sells Because He Writes With His Heart's Blood.

It Is Not For Nothing That Artists Have Called Their Works The Children Of Their Brains And Likened The Pains Of Production To The Pains Of Childbirth.

A Woman May Be As Wicked As She Likes, But If She Isn't Pretty It Won't Do Her Much Good.

One Does Not Really Feel Much Grief At Other People's Sorrows; One Tries, And Puts On A Melancholy Face, Thinking Oneself Brutal For Not Caring More; But One Cannot And It Is Better, For If One Grieved Too Deeply At Other People's Tears, Life Would Be Unendurable; And Every Man Has Sufficient Sorrows Of His Own Without Taking To Heart His Neighbour's.

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.

For Men, As A Rule, Love Is But An Episode Which Takes Place Among The Other Affairs Of The Day, And The Emphasis Laid On It In Novels Gives It An Importance Which Is Untrue To Life. There Are Few Men To Whom It Is The Most Important Thing In The World, And They Are Not The Very Interesting Ones; Even Women, With Whom The Subject Is Of Paramount Interest, Have A Contempt For Them.

But The Only Important Thing In A Book Is The Meaning It Has For You; It May Have Other And Much More Profound Meanings For The Critic, But At Second-hand They Can Be Of Small Service To You.

You Must Not Pursue A Success, But Fly From It.

You're Beginning To Dislike Me, Aren't You? Well, Dislike Me. It Doesn't Make Any Difference To Me Now.

An Unfortunate Thing About This World Is That The Good Habits Are Much Easier To Give Up Than The Bad Ones.

Unfortunate Things

The Inclination To Digress Is Human. But The Dramatist Must Avoid It Even More Strenuously Than The Saint Must Avoid Sin, For While Sin May Be Venial, Digression Is Mortal.

As If A Woman Ever Loved A Man For His Virtue.

Men Have An Extraordinarily Erroneous Opinion Of Their Position In Nature; And The Error Is Ineradicable.

It Is Well To Remember That Grammar Is Common Speech Formulated.

Trending Author

Katherine Harris

Virchand Gandhi

Category