Catia

“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

“Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.
~Waddington”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil