The Moon and Sixpence is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham - Pursuing Passion at Any Cost: The Enigmatic Tale of The Moon and Sixpence

by W. Somerset Maugham

The Prime Minister out of office is seen, too often, to have been but a pompous rhetorician, and the General without an army is but the tame hero of a market town.

To my mind the most interesting thing in art is the personality of the artist; and if that is singular, I am willing to excuse a thousand faults.

I cannot agree with the painters who claim superciliously that the layman can understand nothing of painting,

art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.

the critic who has not a practical knowledge of technique is seldom able to say anything on the subject of real value,

The faculty for myth is innate in the human race. It seizes with avidity upon any incidents, surprising or mysterious, in the career of those who have at all distinguished themselves from their fellows, and invents a legend to which it then attaches a fanatical belief. It is the protest of romance against the commonplace of life.

sorry to think that there was nothing between Anthony and Cleopatra but an economic situation;

Tiberius was as blameless a monarch as King George

it is difficult to avoid feeling a certain sympathy for the unlucky parson.

The pendulum swings backwards and forwards. The circle is ever travelled anew.

Sometimes a man survives a considerable time from an era in which he had his place into one which is strange to him, and then the curious are offered one of the most singular spectacles in the human comedy.

I will continue to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. But I should be thrice a fool if I did it for aught but my own entertainment.

It must have been bad for the furniture, but I suppose the hostess took her revenge on the furniture of her friends when, in turn, she visited them.

Only the poet or the saint can water an asphalt pavement in the confident anticipation that lilies will reward his labour.

think now that he was blind to everything but to some disturbing vision in his soul.