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The Moon and Sixpence QUOTES

The Moon and Sixpence QUOTES

1 " As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Sixpence

2 " When a woman loves you she's not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she's weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Sixpence

3 " The writer is more concerned to know than to judge. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Sixpence

4 " Women are constantly trying to commit suicide for love, but generally they take care not to succeed. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Sixpence

5 " 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. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Sixpence

6 " I could have forgiven it if he'd fallen desperately in love with someone and gone off with her. I should have thought that natural. I shouldn't really have blamed him. I should have thought he was led away. Men are so weak, and women are so unscrupulous. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Sixpence

7 " Women are strange little beasts,' he said to Dr. Coutras. 'You can treat them like dogs, you can beat them till your arm aches, and still they love you.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'Of course, it is one of the most absurd illusions of Christianity that they have souls. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Sixpence

8 " Because women can do nothing except love, they've given it a ridiculous importance. They want to persuade us that it's the whole of life. It's an insignificant part. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Sixpence

9 " 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. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Sixpence

10 " 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. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Sixpence

11 " To my mind the most interesting thing in art is the
personality of the artist; and if that is singular, I am
willing to excuse a thousand faults. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Sixpence

12 " He had violent passions, and on occasion desire seized his body so that he was driven to an orgy of lust, but he hated the instincts that robbed him of his self-possession. I think, even, he hated the inevitable partner in his debauchery. When he had regained command over himself, he shuddered at the sight of the woman he had enjoyed. His thoughts floated then serenely in the empyrean, and he felt towards her the horror that perhaps the painted butterfly, hovering about the flowers, feels to the filthy chrysalis from which it has triumphantly emerged. I suppose that art is a manifestation of the sexual instinct. It is the same emotion which is excited in the human heart by the sight of a lovely woman, the Bay of Naples under the yellow moon, and the Entombment of Titian. It is possible that Strickland hated the normal release of sex because it seemed to him brutal by comparison with the satisfaction of artistic creation. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Sixpence

13 " A man's work reveals him. In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he wishes the world to accept, but in his book or his picture the real man delivers himself defenceless. No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind. No one can produce the most casual work without disclosing the innermost secrets of his soul. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Sixpence

14 " Can the law get blood out of a stone? I haven't any money. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Sixpence

15 " I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Sixpence

16 " Character? I should have thought it needed a good deal of character to throw up a career after half an hour’s meditation, because you saw in another way of living a more intense significance. And it required still more character never to regret the sudden step.
I wondered if Abraham really had made a hash of life. Is to do what you most want, to live under the conditions that please you, in peace with yourself, to make a hash of life; and is it success to be an eminent surgeon with ten thousand a year and a beautiful wife? I suppose it depends on what meaning you attach to life, the claim which you acknowledge to society, and the claim of the individual. But again I held my tongue, for who am I to argue with a knight? "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Sixpence

17 " I will continue to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. But I should be thrice a fool if I did it for aught but my own entertainment. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Sixpence

18 " Man's desire for the approval of his fellows is so strong, his dread of their censure so violent, that he himself has brought his enemy (conscience) within his gates; and it keeps watch over him, vigilant always in the interests of its master to crush any half-formed desire to break away from the herd. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Sixpence

19 " Only the poet or the saint can water an asphalt pavement in the confident anticipation that lilies will reward his labour. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Sixpence

20 " Life isn't long enough for love and art. "

― W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Sixpence