Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it.

I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.

—W. Somerset Maugham

I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the centre of the world.

—W. Somerset Maugham

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

—W. Somerset Maugham

Peace with all nations, and the right which that gives us with respect to all nations, are our object.

—W. Somerset Maugham

Temptation rarely comes in working hours. It is in their leisure time that men are made or marred.

—W. N. Taylor

The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.

—T. S. Eliot

Why comes temptation, but for man to meet and master and crouch beneath his foot, and so be pedestaled in triumph?

—Robert Browning

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.

—Oscar Wilde

I can resist anything but temptation.

—Oscar Wilde