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“The crown of literature is poetry. It is the end and aim. It is the sublimest activity od the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale

“The ideal has many names and beauty is but one of them...
Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all: that is why the criticism of art, except in so far as it is unconcerned with beauty and therefore with art, is tiresome...
Beauty is that which satisfies the aesthetic instinct. But who wants to be satisfied? It is only the dullard that enough is as good as a feast. Let us face it: beauty is but a bore.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale

“He had the aloofness of manner you often find in those who have lived much alone in unfrequented places...they seem always to hold something back. They have a life in themselves that they keep apart...this hidden life is the only one that signifies to them. And no and then their eyes betray the weariness with the social round into which hazard or the fear of seeming odd has for a moment forced them. They seem then to long for the monotonous solitude of some place of their predilection where they can be once more alone with the reality they have found.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Gentleman in the Parlour: A Record of a Journey from Rangoon to Haiphong

“He could not show his feelings. People told him he was unemotional: but he knew he was at the mercy of his emotions: an accidental kindness touched him so much that sometimes he did not venture to speak in order not to betray the unsteadiness of his will”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage