W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
The audience is not the least important actor in the play and if it will not do its allotted share the play falls to pieces.
Quotes to Explore
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The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
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When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
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Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
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Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.
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There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
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Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.
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Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.
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One of the falsest of proverbs is that you must lie on the bed that you have made. The experience of life shows that people are constantly doing things which must lead to disaster, and yet by some chance manage to evade the result of their folly.
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There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action.
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Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
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When you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right.
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You learn more quickly under the guidance of experienced teachers. You waste a lot of time going down blind alleys if you have no one to lead you.
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It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, 'I don't know.'
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Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
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In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.
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What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.
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It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humour.
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Impropriety is the soul of wit.
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It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
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The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.
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If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie.
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Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.
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It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.
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Only a mediocre person is always at his best.