The Constant Wife Quotes

“Oh, my dear, you musn’t be offended just because I’ve taken away from you the satisfaction of thinking that you have been deceiving me all these months.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Constant Wife

“They’re like little boys, men. Sometimes of course they’re rather naughty and you have to pretend to be angry with them. They attach so much importance to such entirely unimportant things that it’s really touching. And they’re so helpless. Have you never nursed a man when he’s ill? It wrings your heart. It’s just like a dog or a horse. They haven’t got the sense to come in out of the rain, poor darlings. They have all the charming qualities that accompany general incompetence. They’re sweet and good and silly, and tiresome and selfish. You can’t help liking them, they’re so ingenuous, and so simple. They have no complexity or finesse. I think they’re sweet, but it’s absurd to take them seriously.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Constant Wife

“A man thinks it quite natural that he should fall out of love with a woman, but it never strikes him for a moment that a woman can do anything so unnatural as to fall out of love with him.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Constant Wife

“It speaks very well for human nature that with the masses of dear friends we have it’s only to-day that one of them broke the news to us.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Constant Wife

“Now listen. If I think he’s awful we’ll just talk about the weather and the crops for a few minutes and then we’ll have an ominous pause and stare at him. That always makes a man feel a perfect fool and the moment a man feels a fool he gets up and goes.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Constant Wife

“Martha
I thought you loved her.
Bernard
Enough to want her happiness above all things.
Martha
You are forty-five, aren’t you? I forgot that for a moment.
Bernard
Dear Martha. You have such an attractive way of putting things.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Constant Wife

“... a lot of incompetent women talk a great deal of nonsense about housekeeping. If you know your job and have good servants it can be done in ten minutes a day.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Constant Wife