The minstrel was known as Roland le Fartere and that the trick was to make a leap, a whistle and a fart

Henry II, in the twelfth century, had been so fond of the favourite party trick of one of his minstrels that he gave him a thirty-acre estate in Suffolk, on the sole condition that he and his heirs repeated it in the royal presence every Christmas. When one learns that the minstrel was known as Roland le Fartere and that the trick was to make a leap, a whistle and a fart, one can understand why his descendants had alienated the estate by the 1330s.

J. Barker Agincourt (2005), 139

For they are necessary to have above all else, especially money

First of all, he [the wise prince] will consider how much strength he has or can obtain, how many men are available and how much money. For unless he is well supplied with those two basic elements, it is folly to wage war, for they are necessary to have above all else, especially money.

Christine de Pizan, cited in J. Barker, Agincourt (2005), 103

There would be lines of barracks beneath the deanary gardens.

We wandered atop the walls: from here to Monk Bar, another medieval gatehouse, they follow the line of the Roman fortress's defences, angling round the [York] minster and affording lovely views of the soaring Norman architecture. Ottaway looked down longingly on the land he would never get to dig. There would be lines of barracks, he reckoned, beneath the deanary gardens. 'In my mind's eye I see it excavated,' he said. 'Not in my lifetime, but one day, when they build a nuclear power station here.'

C. Higgins, Under another sky (2013), 166

Flattery calms all turbulence, emotional and atmospheric

One day, before taking off from San Francisco, flight attendants summoned Hyland [the pilot] from the cockpit to deal with a frightened passenger. It turned out to be John Steinbeck, who needed several drinks to quell his fear of flying. Hyland thought the author of The grapes of wrath was America's greatest living writer, and told him so. Flattery calms all turbulence, emotional and atmospheric. Whenever Steinbeck needed to fly cross-country, he phoned Hyland to learn his schedule, and planned his flights accordingly.

A. Beam, A great idea at the time: the rise, fall, and curious afterlife of the Great Books (2008), 144

But the Bible is an oriental book. Its alien imagery has nothing to do with us.

 To my mind King James's Bible has been a very harmful influence on English prose. I am not so stupid as to deny its great beauty. It is majestical. But the Bible is an oriental book. Its alien imagery has nothing to do with us. Those hyperboles, those luscious metaphors, are foreign to our genius. I cannot but think that not the least of the misfortunes that the Secession from Rome brought upon the spiritual life of our country is that this work for so long a period became the daily, and with many the only, reading of our people. Those rhythms, that powerful vocabulary, that grandiloquence, became part and parcel of the national sensibility. 

W.S. Maugham, The summing up (1938), 34

He had crossed out in pencil all the passages in the Book of Common Prayer that praised God

It is strange that the devout should think God can be pleased when they slavishly pay them to him. When I was young I had an elderly friend who used often to ask me to stay with him in the country. He was a religious man and he read prayers to the assembled household every morning. But he had crossed out in pencil all the passages in the Book of Common Prayer that praised God. He said that there was nothing so vulgar as to praise people to their faces and, himself a gentleman, he could not believe that God was so ungentlemanly as to like it. At the time it seemed to me a curious eccentricity. I think now that my friend showed very good sense.

W.S. Maugham, The summing up (1938), 262

I have read a good many books on the art of fiction and all ascribe very small value to the plot

As a writer of fiction I go back, through innumerable generations, to the teller of tales round the fire in the cavern that sheltered neolithic men. I have had some sort of story to tell and it has interested me to tell it. To me it has been a sufficient object in itself. It has been my misfortune that for some time now a story has been despised by the intelligent. I have read a good many books on the art of fiction and all ascribe very small value to the plot. (In passing I should like to say that I cannot understand the sharp distinction some clever theorists make between story and plot. A plot is merely the pattern on which the story is arranged.) From these books you would judge that it is only a hindrance to the intelligent author and a concession that he makes to the stupid demands of the public.

W.S. Maugham, The summing up (1938), 216

The fact is that they [The English] are suspicious of form

The sermons that Henry James preached to the English on form in the novel aroused their interest, but have little affected their practice. The fact is that they are suspicious of form. They find in it a sort of airlessness; its constraint irks them; they feel that when the author has fixed upon his material a wilful shape life has slipped through his fingers.  

W.S. Maugham, The summing up (1938), 206

As soon as I could afford it I bought a house in Mayfair

It was fortunate for me that I suddenly achieved popularity as a dramatist and so was relieved of the necessity of writing a novel once a year to earn my living. I found plays easy to write; the notoriety they brought me was not unpleasing; and they earned for me enough money to enable me to live less straitly than I had been obliged to. I have never had the bohemian trait of being unconcerned for the morrow. I have never liked to borrow money. I have hated to be in debt. Nor has the squalid life had any attraction for me. I was not born in squalid circumstances. As soon as I could afford it I bought a house in Mayfair.

There are people who despise possessions. Of course when they say that it ill becomes the artist thus to cumber himself they may be right, but it is not a view that artists themselves have held. They have never lived from choice in the garrets in which their admirers like to see them. They have much more often ruined themselves by the extravagance with which they conducted themselves.

W.S. Maugham, The summing up (1938), 169-70

In France a man who has ruined himself for women is generally regarded with sympathy and admiration

English is the only modern language in which it has been found necessary to borrow from the Latin a word with a depreciatory meaning, the word uxorious, for a man's devoted love for his wife. That love should absorb a man has seemed to them unworthy. In France a man who has ruined himself for women is generally regarded with sympathy and admiration; there is a feeling that it was worth while, and the man who has done it feels even a certain pride in the fact; in England he will be thought and will think himself a damned fool. That is why Antony and Cleopatra has always been the least popular of Shakespeare's greater plays. Audiences have felt that it was contemptible to throw away an empire for a woman's sake. Indeed if it were not founded on an accepted legend they would be unanimous in asserting that such a thing was incredible.

W. S. Maugham, The summing up (1938), 137

Ibsen as we know had a meagre power of invention

Ibsen as we know had a meagre power of invention; his characters under different names are very dully repeated and his intrigue from play to play is little varied. It is not a gross exaggeration to say that his only gambit is the sudden arrival of a stranger who comes into a stuffy room and opens the windows; whereupon the people who were sitting there catch their death of cold and everything ends unhappily.

W. S. Maugham, The summing up (1938), 131