Ashenden Quotes

“Mr Harrington was a bore. He exasperated Ashenden, and enraged him; he got on his nerves, and drove him to frenzy. But Ashenden did not dislike him. His self-satisfaction was enormous but so ingenuous that you could not resent it; his conceit was so childlike that you could only smile at it.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Ashenden

“I would sooner read the catalogue of the Army and Navy Stores or Bradshaw's Guide than nothing at all, and indeed I have spent many delightful hours over both these works.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, MR ASHENDEN ET AUTRES NOUVELLES

“How much easier life would be if people were all black or all white and how much simpler it would be to act in regard to them!”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Ashenden

“All sensible people know that vanity is the most devastating, the most universal and the most ineradicable of the passions that afflict the soul of man, and it is only vanity that makes him deny its power. It is more consuming than love. 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.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Ashenden, or The British Agent

“-Hay cierta elegancia en malgastar el tiempo -repuso Ashenden-. Cualquier cretino es capaz de despilfarrar dinero, pero cuando uno gasta su propio tiempo tiene el placer de tirar una cosa que no tiene precio.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Ashenden

“The prospect of spending an evening by himself with his pipe and a book was so agreeable that it made the misery of that journey across the lake positively worth while.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Ashenden Or the British Agent

“A scudding rain, just turning into sleet, swept the deck in angry gusts, like a nagging woman who cannot leave a subject alone.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Ashenden Or the British Agent

“I gather from what you have not said that he is an unmitigated scoundrel."

R. smiled with his pale blue eyes.

"I don't know that I'd go quite so far as that. He hasn't had the value of a public-school education. His ideas of playing the game aren't quite the same as yours and mine. I don't know that I would leave a gold cigarette-case about when he was in the neighbourhood, but if he had lost money to you at poker and he had pinched your cigarette-case, he would immediately pawn it to pay you.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Ashenden

“It was not of course a thing that the big-wigs cared to have anything to do with. Though ready enough to profit by the activities of obscure agents of whom they had never heard, they shut their eyes to dirty work so that they could put their clean hands on their hearts and congratulate themselves that they had never done anything that was unbecoming to men of honour.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Ashenden, or The British Agent

“Time can assuage the pangs of love, but only death can still the anguish of wounded vanity. Love is simple and sees no subterfuge, but vanity cozens you with a hundred disguises. It is part and parcel of every virtue : it is the main spring of courage and the strength of ambition; it gives constancy to the lover and endurance to the stoic; it adds fuel to the fire of the artist's desire for fame and is at once the support and compensation of the honest man's integrity; it leers even cynically in the humility of the saint. You cannot escape it, and should you take pains to guard against it, it will make use of those very pains to trip you up. You are defenceless against its onslaught because you know not on what unprotected side it will attack you. Sincerity cannot protect you from its snare nor humour from its mockery.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, ASHENDEN: OR, THE BRITISH AGENT

“Any fool can waste money, but when you waste time you waste what is priceless.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Ashenden Or the British Agent

“Death so often chooses its moments without consideration.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Ashenden Or the British Agent

“El hombre encuentra siempre más fácil sacrificar su vida que aprender la tabla de multiplicar.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Ashenden

“Ashenden admiraba la bondad, pero no le ofendía lo innoble. La gente le creía hombre sin corazón porque estudiaba más que apreciaba a las personas a su alrededor, e incluso de aquellos a quienes sinceramente quería veía con claridad meridiana sus defectos y sus virtudes. Cuando alguien le gustaba, no era porque fuese ciego a sus faltas, las aceptaba con un tolerante encogerse de hombros; o porque les imaginara dotes que no poseían, y tratando a sus amigos con la fanqueza derivada de esa rectitud de criterio, nunca le defraudaban y rara vez los perdía. No pedía a nadie más de lo que podía dar.”
― w. somerset maugham, Ashenden

“Salió Ashenden de su meditación al percibir que el agua había bajado de tempertura; no podía alcanzar la llave del agua caliente con la mano ni abrirla con los pies (como todo grifo digno de tal nombre debiera poder abrirse), y para añadir más agua caliente se veía obligado a incorporarse por completo. Tampoco le era posible levantar con los pies el tapón para vaciar el baño y así obligarse a salir, ni desde luego tenía la suficiente fuerza de voluntad ni la decisión necesaria para salir del baño y darlo por terminado. A menudo le habían dicho que era una persona de carácter, y en aquel momento se le ocurrió cuán ligeramente juzgaban las personas los asuntos de esta vida sin tener datos suficientes: por ejemplo, nunca le habían visto en un baño caliente que progresiva y rápidamente se iba enfriando.”
― Somerset Maugham, Ashenden

“R. terminó su relato y miró a Ashenden, dejando escapar un relámpago por la ranura de sus ojos medio cerrados.
-Es novelesco, ¿no le parece? -preguntó.
-¿Y me dice usted que eso ha ocurrido hace poco tiempo?
-Hace un par de semanas.
-Parece imposible -repuso Ashenden-. Es un argumento puesto en escena desde hace más de sesenta años y sobre el que se ha escrito más de un centenar de novelas. ¿Quiere decir que la vida nos copia?”
― Somerset Maugham, Ashenden

“Los hechos son narradores pobres. Empienzan la historia por azar, generalmente mucho antes del principio, divagan inconsecuentes y decaen, dejando posibles finales colgados y sin conclusión. Trabajan una situación interesante y la dejan en el aire para seguir con otra que no tiene nada que ver. No saben qué es el clímax y rechazan los efectos dramáticos por irrelevantes.”
― Somerset Maugham, Ashenden