Each one of us is alone in the world… 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. – W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, 1919

We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves; it is civil war. – Charles Caleb Colton

Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again. – Chinese inscription cited by Thoreau in Walden

There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself. – W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, 1938