“But who can fathom the subtleties of the human heart? Certainly not those who expect from it only decorous sentiments and normal emotions.”

— W. Somerset Maugham , book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 43, p. 154

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "But who can fathom the subtleties of the human heart? Certainly not those who expect from it only decorous sentiments a…" by W. Somerset Maugham?

W. Somerset Maugham 158

British playwright, novelist, short story writer 1874–1965

Related quotes

“Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Review of the book My Hope for America (1964) by Lyndon B. Johnson
Cannibals and Christians (1966)

“How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Honesty is the only sign of those who expect nothing from anyone.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Against all these fateful outcomes there will be those among us who refuse to return to normal, or to embrace the “new normal,” those of us who know that “the trouble with normal is it only gets worse.””

Max Haiven (1981)

Already, in the state of emergency that the crisis has unleashed, we are seeing extraordinary measures emerge that reveal that much of the neoliberal regime’s claims to necessity and austerity were transparent lies. The God-like market has fallen, again. In different places a variety of measures are being introduced that would have been unimaginable even weeks ago. These have included the suspension of rents and mortgages, the free provision of public transit, the deployment of basic incomes, a hiatus in debt payments, the commandeering of privatized hospitals and other once-public infrastructure for the public good, the liberation of incarcerated people, and governments compelling private industries to reorient production to common needs. We hear news of significant numbers of people refusing to work, taking wildcat labor action, and demanding their right to live in radical ways. In some places, the underhoused are seizing vacant homes. We are discovering, against the upside-down capitalist value paradigm which has enriched the few at the expense of the many, whose labor is truly valuable: care, service, and frontline public sector workers. There has been a proliferation of grassroots radical demands for policies of care and solidarity not only as emergency measures, but in perpetuity.
No return to normal: for a post-pandemic liberation (March 23, 2020)