W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

The sky darkened, the air grew colder, but he didn't mind. It didn't occur to him to move. This was the right place. This was where he had wanted to be.

One day I undertook a tour through the country, and the diversity and beauties of nature I met with in this charming season, expelled every gloomy and vexatious thought.

I live in a rural residential area. It's a great place for a walk. I'm at my happiest when I'm listening to my iPod while walking around where my feet take me.

I love the feeling of the fresh air on my face and the wind blowing through my hair.

Malacca is such a rest after the crowds of Japan and the noisy hurry of China! Its endless afternoon remains unbroken except by the dreamy, colored, slow-moving Malay life which passes below the hill. There is never any hurry or noise.

The simple life on the farm was everything to me. Nothing was more relaxing after a long plane flight than to reach the winding driveway that led up to my house. The quiet of the night was more soothing than a sleeping pill.

What makes me really happy is a walk in the English countryside. A nice sunset, that British countryside - it means I'm home.

I really love going back home. I think going back to a nice, relaxed little town is the best way to do it.

I have a ranch, which is my favorite place in the world.

I like to be in Le Mans during the summer, of course because I have my family over there but also because the nature is just beautiful at this time and it's in the country. There is a relaxing spirit in this place.

There are two places where I can completely relax: in nature and by the piano.

Every day I wake up in Paris, it's real tranquillity. No pressure. I'm out of the grasp of people. I don't have a phone, and I drift a little bit.

I've had a ranch house my whole life, so we'd go down there, be in nature, and just listen to country music. For me, it's very relaxing. When I hear it while I'm traveling or wherever I am, even working, it just mellows me out and brings me back home... It's comforting.

But it's been perfect - where you grew up is where you relax. It's been the most perfect thing to have the country lifestyle again after my fall and after the Melbourne Cup.

Green calm below, blue quietness above.

It is a time of quiet joy, the sunny morning. When the glittery dew is on the mallow weeds, each leaf holds a jewel which is beautiful if not valuable. This is no time for hurry or for bustle. Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.

the beauty of doing nothing

The lamps are burning and the starry sky is over it all.

...So let us welcome peaceful evening in.

Away from the tumult of motor and mill I want to be care-free; I want to be still! I'm weary of doing things; weary of words I want to be one with the blossoms and birds.

There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of head or hands. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in reverie, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance.

There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed.

There is a peacefulness, an air of reflection, about a rocking-chair that attaches to no other moving object.

There's no peace like the peace of an inner courtyard on a sunny day.