Collected Stories Quotes

“We know that it will profit a man little if he gain the whole world and lose his soul. I think I have won mine.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Collected Stories of W. Somerset Maugham: Introduction by Nicholas Shakespeare

“Good gracious, no,” said 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. Time can assuage the pangs of love, but only death can still the anguish of wounded vanity. Love is simple and seeks no subterfuge, but vanity cozens you with a hundred disguises. It is part and parcel of every virtue: it is the mainspring of courage and the strength of ambition; it gives constancy to”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Collected Stories of W. Somerset Maugham: Introduction by Nicholas Shakespeare