“Tahiti is very far away, and I knew that I should never see it again. A chapter of my life was closed, and I felt a little nearer to inevitable death.”

—  W. Somerset Maugham, book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 58, p. 213

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Feb. 8, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Tahiti is very far away, and I knew that I should never see it again. A chapter of my life was closed, and I felt a lit…" by W. Somerset Maugham?
W. Somerset Maugham photo
W. Somerset Maugham158
British playwright, novelist, short story writer 1874–1965

Related quotes

Henryk Sienkiewicz photo

“Let there be at once also the end of the world! O God! if that is to be my punishment, I swear I will go away, never to see her again in life, — only save her!”

Henryk Sienkiewicz book Without Dogma

17 November
Without Dogma (1891)

Terry Pratchett photo

“If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Final lines of his Richard Dimbleby lecture Shaking Hands With Death on euthanasia and assisted suicide, quoted in &quot;Terry Pratchett: my case for a euthanasia tribunal&quot; in The Guardian (2 February 2010) http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/feb/02/terry-pratchett-assisted-suicide-tribunal <br class="br">General sources <br class="br">Context: I dare say that quite a few people have contemplated death for reasons that much later seemed to them to be quite minor. If we are to live in a world where a socially acceptable &quot;early death&quot; can be allowed, it must be allowed as a result of careful consideration.<br>Let us consider me as a test case. As I have said, I would like to die peacefully with Thomas Tallis on my iPod before the disease takes me over and I hope that will not be for quite some time to come, because if I knew that I could die at any time I wanted, then suddenly every day would be as precious as a million pounds. If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice.

Tim O'Brien photo

“Right then, with the shore so close, I understood that I would not do what I should do. I would not swim away from my hometown and my country and my life. I would not be brave.”

Tim O'Brien book The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried (1990), On the Rainy River

Chinua Achebe photo

“The land of the living was not far removed from the domain of the ancestors. There was coming and going between them, especially at festivals and also when an old man died, because an old man was very close to the ancestors. A man's life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.”

Chinua Achebe book Things Fall Apart

Source: Things Fall Apart (1958), Chapter 13 (p. 115)

Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“I fear you close by; I love you far away.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Nick Hornby photo

“But I'd felt as if I'd pissed my life away in the same way that you can piss money away. I'd had a life, full of kids and wives and jobs and all the usual stuff, and I'd somehow managed to mislay it. No, you see, that's not right. I knew where my life was, just as you know where the money goes when you piss it away. I hadn't mislaid it at all. I'd spent it.”

Nick Hornby book A Long Way Down

A Long Way Down (2005)

Clarence Thomas photo

“I was seized with a guilt that I knew would never leave me, and I knew I didn't deserve to be free of it. I hadn't quite reached the end of my rope, but I was close enough.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Page 145
2000s, (2008)

Lucy Larcom photo

“Sometimes it seems to me that God's way of dealing with me is not to let me see much of my friends, those who are most to me in the spiritual life, lest I should forget that the invisible bond is the only reality. That is the only way I can reconcile myself to the inevitable separations of life and death.”

Lucy Larcom (1824–1893) American teacher, poet, author

Her last letter to Episcopalian Bishop Phillips Brooks, just prior to his death on 23 January (17 January 1893), in Ch. 12 : Last Years.
Lucy Larcom : Life, Letters, and Diary (1895)

“For me, abstraction is real, probably more real than nature. I'll go further and say that abstraction is nearer my heart. I prefer to see with closed eyes.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

Quoted in: Arts/Canada, Vol. 23 (1966), p. 46

Related topics