W. Somerset Maugham on Knowledge

"You know that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct."

"I have been forced to conclude from this that we know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits."

"Don't you know? Because American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers."

"I had not yet learnt how contradictory is human nature; I did not know how much pose there is in the sincere, how much baseness in the noble, or how much goodness in the reprobate."

"...we learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others."

"Aren't you missing a lot of fun? You know, one's young for such a little while."

"Now the world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger."

"I'm beginning to think it's very hard to know what to believe in this world."

"The writer is more concerned to know than to judge."

"I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that that is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues."

"It is very natural that clever young men should be rather odious. They are conscious of gifts that they do not know how to use. They are exasperated with the world that will not recognize their merit. They have something to give, and no hand is stretched out to receive it. They are impatient for the fame they regard as their due."