Nuclear liquid drop model is revisited and an explicit introduction of the surface-curvature terms is presented. The corresponding parameters of the extended classical energy formula are adjusted to the contemporarily known nuclear binding energies and fission barrier heights. Using 2766 binding energies of nuclei with $Z\geq 8$ and $N\geq 8$ it is shown that the performance of the new approach is improved by a factor of about 6, compared to the previously published liquid drop model results, in terms of both the masses (new r.m.s. deviation $<\delta M> = 0.698$ MeV) and the fission barriers (new r.m.s. deviation of the fission barriers of isotopes with $Z> 70$ is $<\delta V_B> = 0.88$ MeV). The role of the curvature terms and their effects on the description of the experimental quantities are discussed in detail; for comparison the parameters of the more 'traditional' approaches are re-fitted taking into account the nuclear masses known today and the performances of several variants of the model are compared. The isospin dependence in the new description of the barriers is in a good agreement with the extended Thomas-Fermi approach; it also demonstrates a good qualitative agreement with the fission life-time systematics tested on the long chain of Fermium isotopes known experimentally. The new approach offers also a very high stability in terms of the extrapolation from the narrower range of nuclides to a more extended one - a property of particular interest for the contemporary exotic beam projects: the corresponding properties are illustrated and discussed.