W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.

W. Somerset Maugham

• Powerful
• Imagination
• Exercise

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Quotes to Explore

• Professional golf is the only sport where, if you win 20% of the time, you're the best.

  

  Jack Nicklaus
  • Time
  • Best
  • Professional

• I can improve it a little bit. But it's my head, it's the way I am. So at the end of the day, I will be who I am and I will win how much I can win.

  

  Marat Safin
  • Day
  • End
  • Win

• I'd love to see more middle and high school teachers who are not teaching English develop classroom libraries. Our message to kids should be that reading is for everyone.

  

  Rae Carson
  • School
  • Kids
  • Reading

• All lives have triumphs and tragedies, laughter and tears, and mine has been no different. What really matters is whether, after all of that, you remain strong and a comfort to your loved ones. I have tried to meet that test.

  

  Pat Nixon
  • Different
  • Strong
  • Tears

• Is there any more encouraging sign than to see an Indian, who has never been to a university, like our friend Mr. Asutosh Dey here, for example, carrying out original work and finding it recognized by the foremost societies of the world?

  

  C. V. Raman
  • World
  • Work
  • Friend

• I want a natural burial. Just straight into the ground in a shroud.

  

  Caitlin Doughty
  • Want
  • Natural
  • Straight

• The direction of your focus is the direction your life will move. Let yourself move toward what is good, valuable, strong and true.

  

  Ralph Marston
  • Life
  • Good
  • True

• As an actor there's a lot of scrutiny and, even when you've had success, it becomes about sustaining that success. A friend of mine described it as a peakless mountain. Even for De Niro there's Pacino and for Pacino there's De Niro.

  

  Eddie Redmayne
  • Success
  • Friend
  • Mountain

• Virtue must be valuable, if men and women of all degrees pretend to have it.

  

  E. W. Howe
  • Men
  • Women
  • Virtue

• Life wasn't about freeing up human souls. It was about creating obedient slaves in the hierarchical construction of the society - with God at the top, then the king and then the father.

  

  Ingmar Bergman
  • Life
  • Up
  • God

• You look in my room and it looks neat enough, but if you dared to look under my bed or in my closet, oh what a mess!

  

  Tamera Mowry
  • You
  • Look
  • Bed

• It's no secret that I've been reluctant to use my name for things.

  

  Sally Ride
  • Things
  • Secret
  • Name

• Cable has come along; many all-news 24 hour cable outlets in the United States. They have cut deeply into the traditional networks' viewing audience.

  

  Walter Cronkite
  • Audience
  • United States

• Have you read 'The Grapes of Wrath?' That was my family. My dad was a sharecropper in western Oklahoma. When the dust storms came and everything got wiped out, they came to California. The guys with the mattresses on the tops of their cars in the movie? That was the way it was.

  

  B. Wayne Hughes
  • Family
  • Movie
  • You

• I don't know how much the other fighters make. But I need to tell you that, for myself, money is not the first consideration.

  

  Fedor Emelianenko
  • Money
  • Know
  • Myself

• I went to a military school between the ages of six and 12 and later into the air force. You learn discipline and strength of character.

  

  Larry Hagman
  • School
  • Character
  • Air

• I think we are living in paradise with regards to the ways we can amuse ourselves, communicate. We have such a richness of possibilities.

  

  Ian Watson
  • Think
  • Living
  • Paradise

• On banks, I make no apology for attacking spivs and gamblers who did more harm to the British economy than Bob Crow could achieve in his wildest Trotskyite fantasies, while paying themselves outrageous bonuses underwritten by the taxpayer. There is much public anger about banks and it is well deserved.

  

  Vince Cable
  • Achieve
  • Anger
  • Apology

• I planned on being an English teacher, but I don't know where that went.

  

  John Krasinski
  • English
  • Teacher

• One of the jokes on our flight is that, if we have a normal entry day going, the plan is for me... to actually take the orbiter first and fly it for maybe 10 or 15 seconds and then hand it on over to Scooter.

  

  Duane G. Carey
  • Hand
  • Fly

• Our experience is that most entrepreneurs are able to attract debt, even for risky and early stage investments. There are investors who provide debt, but very few who fund through equity.

  

  Jamshyd Godrej
  • Experience

• The great man, whether we comprehend him in the most intense activity of his work or in the restful equipoise of his forces, is powerful, involuntarily and composedly powerful, but he is not avid for power. What he is avid for is the realization of what he has in mind, the incarnation of the spirit.

  

  Martin Buber
  • Work
  • Great
  • Mind

• I liked to discover connections like that, especially if they concerned Lila. I traced lines between moments and events distant from one another, I established convergences and divergences. In that period it became a daily exercise: the better off I had been in Ischia, the worse off Lila had been in the desolation of the neighborhood; the more I had suffered upon leaving the island, the happier she had become. It was as if, because of an evil spell, the joy or sorrow of one required the sorrow or joy of the other; even our physical aspect, it seemed to me, shared in that swing.

  

  Elena Ferrante
  • Exercise
  • Sorrow
  • Discover

• Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.

  

  W. Somerset Maugham
  • Powerful
  • Imagination
  • Exercise