Somerset House Quotes & Sayings

The day broke gray and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman servant came into a room in which a child was sleeping and drew the curtains. She glanced mechanically at the house opposite, a stucco house with a portico, and went to the child's bed. — W. Somerset Maugham

Do not fight the thing in detail: turn from it. Look ONLY at your Lord. Sing. Read. Work. — Amy Carmichael

And yet time eventually runs out and you wonder in your heart of hearts if those seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and decades were being spent the best way they possibly could. — Cecelia Ahern

Historically, Islam was hijacked about 20 or 30 years after the Prophet and interpreted in such a way that the ruler has absolute power and is accountable only to God. That, of course, was a very convenient interpretation for whoever was the ruler. — Mohamed ElBaradei

It is the human phosphene response to full-spectrum white, to pure sunlight. — Philip K. Dick

When I was very young - around the age of nine - my family used to go to a house in Somerset that my stepfather rented every summer. There was fishing, lakes and riding. — Christopher Lee

I do not think you want too much sincerity in society. It would be like an iron girder in a house of cards. — W. Somerset Maugham

I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to university go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene. It is the white-collar proletariat. They do not go to university to acquire culture but to get a job, and when they have got one, scamp it. They have no manners and are woefully unable to deal with any social predicament. Their idea of a celebration is to go to a public house and drink six beers. They are mean, malicious and envious . They are scum. — W. Somerset Maugham

We have the highest authority for believing that the meek shall inherit the earth; though I have never found any particular corroboration of this aphorism in the records of Somerset House. — F. E. Smith, 1st Earl Of Birkenhead

I've lived in a flat in Westminster in London for over 20 years; and I also have a house in the country, down in Somerset, so I have the best of both worlds. — Marti Webb

I believe this: If an actor wants a role or wants to work with somebody, then you do everything within reason to try to get that role. If they want you to audition, you audition. If they want you to screen-test, you screen-test. If they want you to come and tap-dance in their hallway, you tap-dance in their hallway. — Kevin Spacey

Writer Somerset Maugham, after his parents deaths, spent a few stultifying years in his uncle's vicarage. Later, in his teens at a boarding-school, having lost his belief in the existence of God said: "The whole horrible structure, based not on the love of God, but on the fear of hell, tumbled down like a house of cards." — Selina Hastings, Countess Of Huntingdon

It was as though the house had been left empty but a minute before and yet that minute was fraught with eternity so that you could not imagine that ever again that house would echo with talk and resound with laughter. — W. Somerset Maugham

It also means I could dump what I learned about the Riot onto Pigpen and he'd once again shut me out. — Katie McGarry

They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been he would have been interested in her just because of that, and curious, but their common past was a wall of indifference between them. Kitty knew too well that she had done nothing to beget her father's affection, he had never counted in the house and had been taken for granted, the bread-winner who was a little despised because he could provide no more luxuriously for his family; but she had taken for granted that he loved her just because he was her father, and it was a shock to discover that his heart was empty of feeling for her. She had known that they were all bored by him, but it had never occurred to her that he was equally bored by them. He was as ever kind and subdued, but the sad perspicacity which she had learnt in suffering suggested to her that, though he probably never acknowledged it to himself and never would, in his heart he disliked her. — W. Somerset Maugham

Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain. We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them. We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house. — W. Somerset Maugham

The God who makes the promise keeps the promise. — James Carroll