W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

There's light and dark in all things, you know?

Life is that perfect fine line between ironies.

The combination of domesticity and wildness - that's a deep expression.

Duality is not a story. Duality is just a complexity.

It is not together, but the ensemble is perfect.

Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony.

So what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level.

Everybody's got that split between the beautiful and fragile, the hard and the dark.

I really like blending two things together that are polar opposites. Because I feel like, in a large aspect, that's kinda like what I am.

I'm fascinated by the yin and yang of everything.

That's been a huge recurring thing in growing up - allowing two things to exist in the same space even though, instinctively, they might not be designated to.

Nature is harmony in discord.

I am the form and I am the hollow, the thrust and the contour

The rose and thorn, the treasure and dragon, joy and sorrow, all mingle into one.

Simplicity and complexity need each other.

Isn’t it wonderful the way the world holds both the deeply serious, and the unexpectedly mirthful?

I write a world where everyone is partly right.

Humor and seriousness are not in opposition to each other.

Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.

Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash.

Life is made up of marble and mud.

The human mind, if it is to keep its sanity, must maintain the nicest balance between unity and plurality.

I go back and forth between wanting to be abundantly simple and maddeningly complex.

Extremes in nature equal ends produce; In man they join to some mysterious use.

The rose and the thorn, and sorrow and gladness are linked together.