Arpita > Arpita's Quotes

“What have I always believed?
That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are still alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger for them.”
― George Eliot

“The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

“Concentration comes out of a combination of confidence and hunger.”
― Arnold Palmer

“It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”
― Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy

“You," he said, "are a terribly real thing in a terribly false world, and that, I believe, is why you are in so much pain.”
― Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“The heart of a father is the masterpiece of nature.”
― Prevost Abbe, Manon Lescaut

“Listen, there is no way any true man is going to let children live around him in his home and not discipline and teach, fight and mold them until they know all he knows. His goal is to make them better than he is. Being their friend is a distant second to this.”
― Victor Devlin

“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

“The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.”
― Somerset Maugham

“People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“Only a mediocre person is always at his best. ”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“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

“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

“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...”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge

“Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“In the first place it's not true that people improve as you know them better: they don't. That's why one should only have acquaintances and never make friends. An acquaintance shows you only the best of himself, he's considerate and polite, he conceals his defects behind a mask of social convention; but we grow so intimate with him that he throws the mask aside, get to know him so well that he doesn't trouble any longer to pretend; then you'll discover a being of such meanness, of such trivial nature, of such weakness, of such corruption, that you'd be aghast if you didn't realize that that was his nature and it was just as stupid to condemn him as to condemn the wolf because he ravens or the cobra because he strikes.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Christmas Holiday

“It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say "I don't know.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither. We must be very humble. We must see the beauty of quietness. We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us. And let us seek the love of simple, ignorant people. Their ignorance is better than all our knowledge. Let us be silent, content in our little corner, meek and gentle like them. That is the wisdom of life.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

“Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

“It's no good crying over spilt milk, because all the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“I have nothing but contempt for the people who despise money. They are hypocrites or fools. Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five. Without an adequate income half the possibilities of life are shut off. The only thing to be careful about is that you do not pay more than a shilling for the shilling you earn. You will hear people say that poverty is the best spur to the artist. They have never felt the iron of it in their flesh. They do not know how mean it makes you. It exposes you to endless humiliation, it cuts your wings, it eats into your soul like a cancer.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“I've always been interested in people, but I've never liked them.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“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.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

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

“My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.”
― W Somerset Maugham

“I don't understand anything. Life is so strange. I feel like some one who's lived all his life by a duck-pond and suddenly is shown the sea. It makes me a little breathless, and yet it fills me with elation. I don't want to die, I want to live. I'm beginning to feel a new courage. I feel like one of those old sailors who set sail for undiscovered seas and I think my soul hankers for the unknown.”
― William Somerset Maugham

“There are more quarrels smothered by just shutting your mouth, and holding it shut, than by all the wisdom in the world.”
― Henry Ward Beecher

“We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are dissatisfied with ourselves.”
― William Hazlitt, Characteristics: In the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims