Ashenden Or the British Agent

by W. Somerset Maugham

"In my youth I was always taught that you should take a woman by the waist and a bottle by the neck,"

He spoke English very well, with a Spanish accent, but with an American intonation.

Was it La Rochefoucauld or Oscar Wilde who said that you should commit errors in youth in order to have something to regret in old age?

With advancing years, mercifully, you can snap your fingers at the terror and the servitude of love, but age cannot free you from the thraldom of vanity.