The Razor's Edge

by W. Somerset Maugham

I hadn’t any particular wish to do this, but no reason to refuse, so I said I would be glad to.

“I wouldn’t know. Sometimes a very small thing will have an effect on you out of all proportion to the event. It depends on the circumstances and your mood at the time.

but he found himself now in the agreeable situation of being able to do what was best for others and at the same time what was convenient to himself.

Gray too seemed to want me to stay, so I let myself be persuaded to do what I wanted to.

“I suppose I didn’t really love him, but one can get on all right without love.

I think it’s all stuff and nonsense to say that there can be love without passion; when people say love can endure after passion is dead they’re talking of something else, affection, kindliness, community of taste and interest, and habit. Especially habit. Two people can go on having sexual intercourse from habit in just the same way as they grow hungry at the hour they’re accustomed to have their meals.

Since her slanders were repeated she was often not on speaking terms with the objects of her venom, but she gave good parties and most of them found it convenient after a while to forgive her.

“I’ve been a secretary for twenty-one years, my dear sir, and I’ve made it a rule to believe all my employers as pure as the driven snow. I’ll admit that when one of my ladies found herself three months gone in the family way when his lordship had been shooting lions in Africa for six, my faith was sorely tried, but she took a little trip to Paris, a very expensive little trip it was too, and all was well. Her ladyship and I shared a deep sigh of relief.”

“Believe me, my dear fellow,” he went on after a pause, “there’ll be none of this damned equality in heaven.”

I’ve always felt that there was something pathetic in the founders of religion who made it a condition of salvation that you should believe in them.

“Life would be even harder for us poor women than it is if it were not for the unbelievable vanity of men.”