W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

It must be that there is something naturally absurd in a sincere emotion, though why there should be I cannot imagine, unless it is that man, the ephemeral inhabitant of an insignificant planet, with all his pain and all his striving is but a jest in an eternal mind.

W. Somerset Maugham

• Mind
• Why
• Pain

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Quotes to Explore

• If I ever had needed to put together a CV, it would be quite short. Like many young people, I'd highlight my desire to work hard.

  

  Cameron Russell
  • People
  • Work
  • Together

• I am a massive fan of early electronica like Steve Reich, Pat Metheny and Thomas Dolby. I used to be a big raver, too, so anything dance. I love ambient music like Tunng. I love acoustic and classical, too.

  

  Kate Fleetwood
  • Music
  • Like
  • Dance

• I think it's always easy to be sympathetic to parts of the government in detail; in their concrete manifestations. Because obviously, we don't have government for no reason.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • Think
  • Government
  • Easy

• If you take away the gift of reading, you create the gift of listening.

  

  Malcolm Gladwell
  • Reading
  • Listening
  • Gift

• Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can't imagine ourselves living without.

  

  A. R. Ammons
  • Poetry
  • Years
  • Living

• To assume that someone's views are invariably influenced or shaped by his or her partner is lazy. It is an intellectual crutch we grope for when we do not have an effective counter to someone's argument.

  

  Brown Campbell
  • Partner
  • Lazy
  • Argument

• That's one of my real goals is to keep theater in my life.

  

  Finn Wittrock
  • Life
  • Real
  • Goals

• I don't agree with boarding school. It's not something that I would do with my children, but I think it's something that kind of exists in England in a traditional way, and you do form very close relationships with the girls you go to school with. But it is a strange thing to live in an environment which is solely female.

  

  Gabriella Wilde
  • Live
  • Children
  • School

• I believe the Thai people are patient, and the people at least give me a chance to prove my ability to help them.

  

  Yingluck Shinawatra
  • People
  • Believe
  • Help

• For too long, Japan has been dragging its feet as it ignores the steps the U.S. has made to ensure a safe beef supply and shows a disregard for our prior trade pacts.

  

  Randy Neugebauer
  • Long
  • Feet
  • Safe

• Part of the reason I sort of shot out like a cannon out of Michigan and left home at such an early age is because I had to feel independent.

  

  Madonna Breakfast Club
  • Home
  • Age
  • Independent

• In '94, we made the deal during collective bargaining that wasn't the right deal, just to save the season. Allowing the 'in the crease' rule, the foot-in-the-crease rule, we should have not done.

  

  Gary Bettman
  • Done
  • Just
  • Collective

• We do not need more intellectual power, we need more spiritual power. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen.

  

  Calvin Coolidge
  • Power
  • Spiritual
  • Need

• Everything I've ever written, I had a very distinct vision of what I wanted it to look like. But, other directors never do it that way.

  

  Dan Gilroy Breakfast Club
  • Never
  • Vision
  • Look

• I thought if my son was now eighteen years old and he was tempted to join the fight and take the burden of protecting his family - because it's always tempting especially for young men - what would I do as a mother to stop him?

  

  Nadine Labaki
  • Men
  • Family
  • Mother

• The earth is such a voluminous, sparse, wild place that has its own rhythm that human beings try to control and strategize our way around, but the truth is, if you're out someplace like the ocean on a capsized boat, it doesn't matter if you have academic degrees, or if you're a martial-arts ninja. Nature is a bigger force than you.

  

  Rachael Taylor
  • Truth
  • Nature
  • Earth

• Let not the 12 million Negroes be ashamed of the fact that they are the grandchildren of slaves. There is dishonor in being slave-owners.

  

  Mahatma Gandhi
  • Fact
  • Grandchildren
  • Slaves

• We all have very personal relationships to what happened on 9/11 and the events after tracking Osama bin Laden. Nobody can escape from the influence of that.

  

  Edgar Ramirez
  • Influence
  • Events
  • Escape

• The core of the Jesus message is what has made him relevant for twenty centuries.

  

  Jay Parini
  • Jesus

• It's a weird thing when you spend your life trying to find these great scripts and great parts. You are reading scripts, you are traveling the world, you are hassling your agent. You are trying to find that script.

  

  Chiwetel Ejiofor
  • Life
  • World
  • Great

• Oceans of emotion can be transmitted through a text message, an emoji sequence, and a winking semicolon, but humans are hardwired to respond to visuals.

  

  Jenna Wortham
  • Text

• Acting for me was hard enough without having to think of the accent. And also, when I was auditioning for stuff I would walk into the room with an Australian accent, and I would do the audition in an American accent, and they would invariably say, 'Yeah, it's that good, but I can still hear the oddity coming through.'

  

  Jonathan LaPaglia
  • Good
  • American

• The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I'm talking about myself very directly.

  

  Paul Auster

• It must be that there is something naturally absurd in a sincere emotion, though why there should be I cannot imagine, unless it is that man, the ephemeral inhabitant of an insignificant planet, with all his pain and all his striving is but a jest in an eternal mind.

  

  W. Somerset Maugham
  • Mind
  • Why
  • Pain