Hulan > Hulan's Quotes

“Regrets about the journey, maybe, but not the destination.”
― Nicholas Sparks, Dear John

“It’s the same thing. Passion is passion. It’s the excitement between the tedious spaces, and it doesn’t matter where it’s directed.”
― Nicholas Sparks, Dear John

“I finally understood what true love meant...love meant that you care for another person's happiness more than your own, no matter how painful the choices you face might be.”
― Nicholas Sparks, Dear John

“I had no illusions about you,' he said. 'I knew you were silly and frivolous and empty-headed. But I loved you. I knew that your aims and ideals were vulgar and commonplace. But I loved you. I knew that you were second-rate. But I loved you. It's comic when I think how hard I tried to be amused by the things that amused you and how anxious I was to hide from you that I wasn't ignorant and vulgar and scandal-mongering and stupid. I knew how frightened you were of intelligence and I did everything I could to make you think me as big a fool as the rest of the men you knew. I knew that you'd only married me for convenience. I loved you so much, I didn't care. Most people, as far as I can see, when they're in love with someone and the love isn't returned feel that they have a grievance. They grow angry and bitter. I wasn't like that. I never expected you to love me, I didn't see any reason that you should. I never thought myself very lovable. I was thankful to be allowed to love you and I was enraptured when now and then I thought you were pleased with me or when I noticed in your eyes a gleam of good-humored affection. I tried not to bore you with my love; I knew I couldn't afford to do that and I was always on the lookout for the first sign that you were impatient with my affection. What most husbands expect as a right I was prepared to receive as a favor.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“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

“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, The Painted Veil

“She was a fool and he knew it and because he loved her it had made no difference.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“I'm afraid you've thought me a bigger fool than I am.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“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.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“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.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“Do you absolutely despise me, Walter?"
"No." He hesitated and his voice was strange. "I despise myself.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“Women are often under the impression that men are much more madly in love with them than they really are.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“I don't ask you to forgive me. I don't ask you to love me as you used to love me. But couldn't we be friends?”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“It was strange that Walter with all his cleverness should have so little sense of proportion. Because he had dressed a doll in gorgeous robes and set her in a sanctuary to worship her, and then discovered that the doll was filled with sawdust he could neither forgive himself nor her. His soul was lacerated. It was all make-believe that he had lived on, and when the truth shattered it he thought reality itself was shattered. It was true enough, he would not forgive her because he could not forgive himself.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“It was difficult to understand that he would not come into the bungalow again and that when he got up in the morning she would not hear him take his bath in the Suchow tub. He was alive and now he was dead.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Books and You

“How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“If a man hasn't what's necessary to make a woman love him, it's his fault, not hers.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“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?”
― W Somerset Maugham

“Vaguely, as when you are studying a foreign language and read a page which at first you can make nothing of, till a word or a sentence gives you a clue; and on a sudden suspicion, as it were, of the sense flashes across your troubled wits, vaguely she gained an inkling into the workings of Walter's mind. It was like a dark and ominous landscape seen by a flash of lightning and in a moment hidden again by the night. She shuddered at what she saw.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“Life is really very fantastic, and one has to have a peculiar sense of humour to see the fun of it.
[Virtue]”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“The best style is the style you don't notice.”
― William Somerset Maugham

“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.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved. ”
― W. Somerset Maugham