Agatha Seymour's

It took me a long time to resign myself to making the best of what I had. I think it was a good enough brain to have brought me success in whatever profession I had adopted. I am not one of those persons who are fools at everything but their own speciality. In law, medicine and politics a clear mind and insight into men are useful. /W.S.Maugham/

‘For men,’ as Pope observed, ‘let them say what they will, never approve any other’s sense, but as it squares with their own.’ /W.S.Maugham/

I have never seen people all of a piece. It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and for all that yield a plausible harmony. I have often asked myself how characteristics, seemingly irreconcilable, can exist in the same person. The only explanation I can offer is that so instinctive is each one’s conviction that he is unique in the world, and privileged, that he feels that, however wrong it might be for others, what he for his part does, if not natural and right, is at least venial. /W. S. Maugham/

"I have made a great many mistakes. I have at times fallen victim to a snare to which the writer is peculiarly liable, the desire to carry out in my own life certain actions which I made the characters of my invention do. I have attempted things that were foreign to my nature and obstinately persevered in them because in my vanity I would not confess myself beaten. I have paid too much attention to the opinion of others. I have made sacrifices to unworthy objects because I had not the courage to conflict pain. I have committed follies. I have sensitive conscience, and I have done certain things in my life that I am unable entirely to forget…" /W. S. Maugham/

“MY MOTHER WAS RIGHT: WHEN YOU'VE GOT NOTHING LEFT, ALL YOU CAN DO IS GET INTO SILK UNDERWEAR AND START READING PROUST.” JANE BIRKIN