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"You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live in is to recognize the inevitable selfishness of humanity. You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they? When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably. Men seek but one thing in life – their pleasure."
W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
"I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art."
W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil
"We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person."
W. Somerset Maugham
"The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love."
W. Somerset Maugham
"I’ve always been interested in people, but I’ve never liked them."
W Somerset Maugham (via whatokay)
"I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos."
W. Somerset Maugham (via whatokay)
"It was one of the queer things of life that you saw a person every day for months and were so intimate with him that you could not imagine existence without him; then separation came, and everything went on in the same way, and the companion who had seemed essential proved unnecessary."
W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
"We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person."
W. Somerset Maugham
"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 ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life."
W. Somerset Maugham