Lephty Lewsey > Lephty's Quotes

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Books and You

“Impropriety is the soul of wit.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

“She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be
The candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
― Edith Wharton

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery, and be overwhelmed by disappointments; yet, when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
― Oscar Wilde

“You can never be overdressed or overeducated.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.”
― Oscar Wilde

“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“To define is to limit.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Ah, this delicious night air,' she said, luxuriously sniffing in the coolness. 'Night air and gardening are the great tonics. There is nothing so stimulating as bare contact with rich mother earth. You are never so fresh as when you have been grubbing in the soil - black hands, black nails, and boots covered with mud.' She gave her great jovial laugh.

'I'm a glutton for air and earth,' she said. 'Positively I look forward to death, for then I shall be buried and have the kind earth all round me. No leaden caskets for me - I have given explicit directions. But what shall I do about air? Well, I suppose one can't have everything.'

("Mrs. Amworth")”
― E.F. Benson, Monster Mix

“I'm not absolutely certain of the facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare who says that it's always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping.”
― P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest

“Cheer up, Crips, and keep smiling. That’s the thing to do. If you go through life with a smile on your face, you’ll be amazed how many people will come up to you and say ‘What the hell are you grinning about? What’s so funny?’ Make you a lot of new friends.”
― P. G. Wodehouse

“Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Luck of the Bodkins

“One of the Georges - I forget which - once said that a certain number of hours' sleep each night - I cannot recall at the moment how many - made a man something which for the time being has slipped my memory.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Mike and Psmith

“I don't know if you know it, J.B., but you're the sort of fellow who causes hundreds to fall under suspicion when he's found stabbed in his library with a paper-knife of Oriental design.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell... their heart's in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“From old habit, unconsciously he thanked God that he no longer believed in Him.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“The worst of having so much tact was that you never quite knew whether other people were acting naturally or being tactful too.
[The human element]”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me.”
― Somerset Maugham

“We are foolish and sentimental and melodramatic at twenty-five, but if we weren’t perhaps we should be less wise at fifty.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Favorite Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham