W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

Illusions are like umbrellas - you no sooner get them than you lose them, and the loss always leaves a little painful wound.

W. Somerset Maugham

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Quotes to Explore

• I don't want the news to be patriotic. I don't want to see flags on the lapels of the anchors. I don't want any of that.

  

  Aaron McGruder
  • Want
  • See
  • News

• I think right now we need to look back at the founding values of our country. Rise above partisanship, be less bitter when it comes to important matters that have to be solved.

  

  Walter Isaacson
  • Important
  • Country
  • Think

• In committing an estimated 3,000 U.S. forces to join international Ebola relief efforts in West Africa, President Obama seems to be fulfilling the plans of highly influential progressive groups who seek to transform the American military into more of a social-work organization.

  

  Aaron Klein
  • Work
  • American
  • Military

• I love to cook. I'm a sailor. And I was the eighth-grade ping-pong champion.

  

  Vicki Lawrence
  • Love
  • Champion
  • Sailor

• Man may be considered as having a twofold origin - natural, which is common and the same to all - patronymic, which belongs to the various families of which the whole human race is composed.

  

  Adam Clarke
  • May
  • Man
  • Same

• The biggest battles in human history can only ever be seen through the eyes of the bloke on the front line, and that's by definition a very focused view and one that will vary from individual to individual.

  

  Karen Traviss
  • History
  • Eyes
  • View

• Underground people pay a desperate toll finding out things nobody else has discovered yet. We run around like headless chickens looking for the next cultural fix to spiral around in before it gets appropriated somewhere else and becomes something it never was. There's this sort of one-upmanship in the underground.

  

  Irvine Welsh
  • People
  • Looking
  • Finding

• As taxpayers, we pay our elected officials to serve the people and protect our state and our interests.

  

  Barbara Ann Radnofsky
  • People
  • Pay
  • Protect

• I would love to have children some day. I'd like little gay boys. That would be good.

  

  Lara Stone
  • Good
  • Children
  • Day

• Income inequality is worse in towns run by Democrat mayors than in towns run by Republican mayors.

  

  Rand Paul
  • Run
  • Republican
  • Inequality

• A soulmate is someone whom, when you meet, without thinking - without letting your neocortex play into the decision - you feel an instant familiarity, a sense of connection, a longing.

  

  Karen Salmansohn
  • Thinking
  • Play
  • Decision

• When people ask me why I am running as a woman, I always answer, 'What choice do I have?'

  

  Patricia Schroeder
  • Running
  • Woman
  • Choice

• Romance and novel paint beauty in colors more charming than nature, and describe a happiness that humans never taste. How deceptive and destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss!

  

  Oliver Goldsmith
  • Nature
  • Happiness
  • Beauty

• It's like night and day... to do business, in Europe, there is no bull, they are pretty straightforward.

  

  Caprice Bourret
  • Business
  • Pretty
  • Night

• When I wrote 'Noughts and Crosses', I was halfway through it when I realised this was very like 'Romeo and Juliet'... as long as you make it your own, and put your own spin on it, I think it's brilliant to use other great work to find your own voice.

  

  Malorie Blackman
  • Work
  • Great
  • Long

• I am so blessed that all I've done in my professional life, since I was 17-18, is play music and somehow make a dollar here and there.

  

  Ian McLagan Small Faces
  • Life
  • Music
  • Done

• The longer you hang in there, the greater the chance that something will happen in your favor. No matter how hard it seems, the longer you persist, the more likely your success.

  

  Jack Canfield
  • Success
  • Chance
  • Matter

• 'What harm have the trees done them?' he said. 'Must they punish the grass for their own faults? Men are savages, who would set a land afire because they have a quarrel with other men.'

  

  Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Men
  • Done

• Those who understand the cross increasingly see their sin as God does, and therefore begin to feelabout sin as does God. We begin to mourn for and hate it. In other words, at the cross God becomes larger and we become smaller. This separation is at the heart of the fear of God. This "fear" opens God's wisdom to us because only in light of God's immensity can I see the importance of living for the right end, his glory. And only in the light of my smallness can I feel overawed by the means he used to save me, his cross.

  

  William F. Farley
  • Mean
  • Importance
  • Separation

• In course of time the Brothers Cowper removed the manufacture of their printing machines from London, to Manchester. There they found skilled and energetic workmen, ready to carry their plans into effect.

  

  James Nasmyth
  • Time

• This is going to sound really weird, but I never had a desire to be famous. I never had huge ambitions - never.

  

  Kate Winslet
  • Desire
  • Weird
  • Famous

• If the schooling system does not rapidly close the gap between what it does, and what it should do in response to the demands of the 21st century, it will simply become irrelevant.

  

  David Hood
  • Response
  • Century
  • Between

• Illusions are like umbrellas - you no sooner get them than you lose them, and the loss always leaves a little painful wound.

  

  W. Somerset Maugham