A man's work reveals him. In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he wishes the world to accept, and you can only gain a true knowledge of him by inferences from little actions, of which he is unconscious, and from fleeting expressions, which cross his face unknown to him. Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem. But in his book or his picture the real man delivers himself defenceless.
W. Somerset Maugham
Related Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actuall... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actuall... WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM The leader of men in warfare can show himself to his followers only through a mask, a mask that he m... JOHN KEEGAN Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the trut... OSCAR WILDE When a man gets to despair he knows that all his thinking will never get him out. He will only get o... OSWALD CHAMBERS Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one c... VIKTOR E. FRANKL In the first place it's not true that people improve as you know them better: they don't. That's why... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The source of numerous psychic disturbances and difficulties occasioned by man's progressive alienat... CARL GUSTAV JUNG All the lies and evasions by which man has nourished himself -- civilization, in a word is the fruit... HENRY MILLER All the lies and evasions by which man has nourished himself / civilization, in a word is the fruits... HENRY MILLER It had belonged to that idea of the exasperated consciousness of his victim to become a real test fo... HENRY JAMES I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES Feast of Richard Hooker, Priest, Anglican Apologist, Teacher, 1600 Commemoration of Martin of Porres... C. HAROLD DODD As the uneasiness and reluctance to face it cut him off more and more from all real happiness, and a... C.S. LEWIS Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul. The... MATTHEW KELLY And so we see the paradox that evolution has handed us. If man is the only animal whose consciousnes... ERNEST BECKER By his monstrous way of life he seemed to have put himself beyond the limits of reality. Nothing mov... JAMES JOYCE Man... knows only when he is satisfied and when he suffers, and only his sufferings and his satisfac... JOHANN VON GOETHE IN ONE IMPORTANT WAY, an abusive man works like a magician: His tricks largely rely on getting you t... LUNDY BANCROFT Life is not interested in good and evil. Don Quixote was constantly choosing between good and evil, ... WILLIAM FAULKNER This perfection is the restoration of man to the state of holiness from which he fell, by creating h... ADAM CLARKE He despised causeless affection, just as he despised unearned wealth. They professed to love him for... AYN RAND He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the ... BIBLE The world is full of men who want to be right, when actually the secret of a man's strength and his ... JIM ANDERSON His habit of reading isolated him: it became such a need that after being in company for some time h... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM No man has come to true greatness who has not felt that his life belongs to his race, and that which... PHILLIPS BROOKS It has to be displayed, this face, on a more or less horizontal plane. Imagine a man wearing a mask,... JAMES FENTON Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He ha... FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY You may fancy the Lord had His own power to fall back upon. But that would have been to Him just the... GEORGE MACDONALD Man’s life is a line that nature commands him to describe upon the surface of the earth, without h... PAUL HENRI THIRY D'HOLBACH If a faithful account was rendered of man's ideas upon the Divinity, he would be obliged to acknowle... PAUL HENRI THIRY D'HOLBACH I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona. It says: 'Here lies Jac... HARRY S TRUMAN God wanted to redeem men and open the way of salvation to those who seek Him. But men make themselve... BLAISE PASCAL I filled the song with everything I wished I could teach him about life. I tried to reassure him wit... ELIZABETH GILBERT He had a black mask over his face, ... Our officers were able to pull him from the crowd, and they s... CHARLES RAMSEY The Lonliest Man in the World, she said, only has room in his heart for one person, and if he can't ... GARTH RISK HALLBERG He did not want to play. He wanted to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul ... JAMES JOYCE No man could bring himself to reveal his true character, and, above all, his true limitations as a c... H. L. MENCKEN The scientific method gives us
information by testing and repeating observable things so that we
can... LEWIS N. ROE Under capitalism the common man enjoys amenities which in ages gone by were unknown and therefore in... LUDWIG VON MISES When Bonaparte<... THOMAS CLIO RICKMAN There comes a time in the seeker's life when he discovers that he is at once the lover and the belov... SRI CHINMOY There comes a time in the seeker's life when he discovers that he
is at once the lover and the belov... SRI CHINMOY And when affliction touches a man, he calls on Us, whether lying on his side or sitting or standing;... QURAN What grief is not taken away by time? What passion will survive an unequal battle with it? I knew a ... NIKOLAI GOGOL Decker pulled the mask on. It smelt of his excitement. As soon as he breathed in he got a hard. Not ... CLIVE BARKER Steve Jobs had something like a 90% approval rating from his employees. You hear stories about him b... ASHTON KUTCHER He was a real man, a person of the community. We could relate to him. You could see him walking down... EILEEN MORRIS And they buried him in his own sepulchres, which he had made for himself in the city of David, and l... BIBLE He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He h... JAMES JOYCE The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys... RALPH WALDO EMERSON After visiting these two places (Berchtesgaden and the Eagle's lair on Obersalzberg) you can easily ... JOHN F. KENNEDY Well, I wasn't going to abuse him. I was only going to ask: Is there any quality which distinguishes... GEORGE GISSING It sounds like a fairy-tale, but not only that; this story of what man by his science and practical ... SIGMUND FREUD A Neuroscientist can be the smartest man (or woman) on earth in his understanding of the human mind.... ABHIJIT NASKAR The one who has become free from all mistakes, he has no superior over him; he needs no one to repri... DADA BHAGWAN Though the colored man is no longer subject to be bought and sold, he is still surrounded by an adve... FREDERICK DOUGLASS The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes ... VIKTOR E. FRANKL My conception of the audience is of a public each member of which is carrying about with him what he... ARTHUR MILLER You differ from a great man in only one respect: the great man was once a very little man, but he de... WILHELM REICH His August Majesty chided the bureaucrats for failing to understand a simple principle: the principl... RYSZARD KAPUśCIńSKI The perfection of His relation to us swallows up all our imperfections, all our defeats, all our evi... GEORGE MACDONALD Man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which... ÉMILE DURKHEIM Commemoration of Samuel & Henrietta Barnett, Social Reformers, 1913 & 1936 [The Christian] refus... J. B. PHILLIPS The key to every man is his thought. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which command... RALPH WALDO EMERSON The key to every man is his thought.... He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which comm... RALPH WALDO EMERSON Masquerades disclose the reality of souls. As long as no one sees who we are, we can tell the most i... FERNANDO PESSOA A narcissist with power will attempt to prove in the world only what is already in his head. He can'... SERGIO TRONCOSO Then he was sorry for the great fish... How many people will he feed?.. But are they worthy to eat h... ERNEST HEMINGWAY Whenever one speaks of lonely people one takes too much for granted. One thinks people all know what... RAINER MARIA RILKE A man who lives a part, not to others but alone, is exposed to obvious psychological dangers. In its... JOHN LE CARRé What use is it to us to hear it said of a man that he has thrown off the yoke, that he does not beli... BLAISE PASCAL And when they were departed from him, (for they left him in great diseases,) his own servants conspi... BIBLE He was lonely because he could imagine himself as anything but himself and as anywhere but where he ... WENDELL BERRY The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world, in respect to time an... LIN YUTANG Feast of Peter & Paul, Apostles No man can be without his god. If he have not the true God to ble... RICHARD CHEVENIX TRENCH Here's where things get hazy. John claims that the men hauling him away from the scene were escorted... DAVID WONG She has her helmet, shield and sword. Does she finish him or take pity on the gutless thing before h... DONNA LYNN HOPE To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long ... ERICH MARIA REMARQUE For he has faith enough, he feels, if he were really to delve into himself, faith enough to move mou... JENS PETER JACOBSEN Calumny... gives [Harry] a spiritual purity in the sense that it scours away any outward show, any w... LUKE BELL After Peter came to recognize his own inadequacy, his utter inability to fulfill his destiny apart f... CHARLES R. SWINDOLL Only now it had become indispensable to him to have her face pressed close to him; he could never le... D.H. LAWRENCE The most important thing about a man is what he believes in the depth of his being. This is the thin... HUGH STEVENSON TIGNER Certainly, Gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the stri... EDMUND BURKE Certainly, Gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the stri... EDMUND BURKE His friends told him that nobody was interested in his goddam soul unless it was the priest and he m... FLANNERY O'CONNOR A magician reveals himself not only by the magic he presents but also by the respect and entertainme... AMIT KALANTRI It is only in his work that an artist can find reality and satisfaction, for the actual world is les... TENNESSEE WILLIAMS Men have nothing in common with me--there is no point of contact; they have foolish little feelings ... MARK TWAIN At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings... AYN RAND The Covenant of Grace is that eternal and intimate bond of friendship that God has established with ... JOSEPH C. MORECRAFT III As time passed and he grew to know people better, he began to think of himself as an extraordinary m... SHERWOOD ANDERSON Man’s mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given... AYN RAND The frequency with which a man experiences lust depends upon his own physical condition, whereas the... BERTRAND RUSSELL But if he is angry at the world for doing him harm, why does he take it out on his loving partner? C... SUSAN WEITZMAN Throughout the most trying phase of the Case, Nixon and his family, and sometimes his parents, were ... WHITTAKER CHAMBERS There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; t... RALPH WALDO EMERSON Man was born for society. However little He may be attached to the World, He never can wholly forget... MATTHEW LEWIS But Jehosheba, the daughter of king Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took Joash the son of Ahaziah, and sto... BIBLE
More W. Somerset Maugham
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SOMERSET MAUGHAM The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willing avoids the sight of distress. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Tradition is a guide and not a jailer. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM You know that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasin... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM From the earliest times the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser than they, and bef... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM You can do anything in this world if you are prepares to take the consequences. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Has it occurred to you that transmigration is at once an explanation and a justification of the evil... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Money is like a sixth sense, and you can't make use of the other five without it. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Wives are people who feel they don't dance enough. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of ... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the ... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, ... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character. 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SOMERSET MAUGHAM A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her...but she can never forgive him for the sacrifice... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The average American can get into the kingdom of heaven much more easily than he can get into the Bo... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM When you're eighteen your emotions are violent, but they're not durable. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be ... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM You learn more quickly under the guidance of experienced teachers. You waste a lot of time going dow... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It's always difficult to make conversation with a drunk, and there's no denying it, the sober are at... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Tao. 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SOMERSET MAUGHAM They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been ... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pl... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequence than to have a really affectionate mo... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know the... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain su... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with i... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that havi... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Perhaps the most important use of money - It saves time. Life is so short, and there's so much to do... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM There are few things so pleasant as a picnic eaten in perfect comfort. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The dead look so terribly dead when they're dead. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young ju... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It's a toss-up when you decide to leave the beaten track. Many are called, but few are chosen. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It is very difficult to know people and I don't think one can ever really know any but one's own cou... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persis... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I like manual labor. Whenever I've got waterlogged with study, I've taken a spell of it and found it... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies a... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM All important persons have about them someone in a subordinate position who has their ear. These dep... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM A man ought to work. That's what he's here for. That's how he contributes to the welfare of the comm... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM To write simply is as difficult as to be good. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It is funny about life: if you refuse to accept anything but the very best you will very often get i... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM When I was young I had an elderly friend who used often to ask me to stay with him in the country. H... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Love is a dirty trick played on us to achieve the continuation of the species. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM We have long passed the Victorian era, when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a ba... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacri... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches them tolerance. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM There is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large wi... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actuall... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Tolerance is only another name for indifference. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives by make-believe. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the centre of the wo... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without ... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and wo... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM People ask for criticism, but they only want praise. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM When you have loved as she has loved, you grow old beautifully. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is er... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Nothing in the world is permanent, and we're foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we're ... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty o... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the ... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch's statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is er... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who has lost it. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Charm and nothing but charm at last grows a little tiresome. It's a relief then to deal with a man w... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Life isn't long enough for love and art. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM When things are at their worst I find something always happens. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, pe... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to th... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefo... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM The important thing was to love rather than to be loved. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Men seek but one thing in life - their pleasure. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM Life wouldn't be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesth... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late. W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know the... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM You Europeans know nothing about America. Because we amass large fortunes you think we care for noth... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM