W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.

W. Somerset Maugham

• Life
• Real
• Study

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Quotes to Explore

• If you think about it, you can have the best CGI, but you can always tell that it is CGI. Your brain can spot that is not real even though you think it looks cool. Your brain knows the truth, so you don't jump and you don't scream. It was very important for me to expose the audience to real elements.

  

  Fede Alvarez
  • Important
  • Real
  • Truth

• Being in the stands is very difficult. I was never playing but I am nervous watching, waiting.

  

  Yannick Noah
  • Waiting
  • Playing
  • Nervous

• I do not deal with threats and ultimatums.

  

  Yair Lapid
  • Deal
  • Threats
  • Ultimatums

• We were like a white family from the 1920s or something. My parents had this bizarre, different way of looking at things from the people that surrounded us. I went to an all-Mexican grade school and an all-black high school, and not many people in those places liked the same stuff as me.

  

  Jack White The White Stripes
  • People
  • Different
  • Family

• The way women today are treated in Saudi Arabia is a direct result of the education our children, boys and girls, receive at school.

  

  Basmah bint Saud
  • Women
  • Children
  • School

• I feel like people who know me, my fans, I want them to know I'm just a regular 21-year-old kid who likes movies, who likes to have fun. It lets people see the other side of you and not just the basketball thing.

  

  Zach LaVine
  • People
  • Fun
  • Me

• I just always wanted to be left alone to go into a creative space.

  

  Randy Quaid
  • Alone
  • Space
  • Creative

• I believe in reincarnation of the soul.

  

  Natalia Vodianova
  • Believe
  • Soul
  • I Believe

• The great thing about Gospel is that you don't have to have an album every year in order to keep working.

  

  Yolanda Adams
  • Great
  • You
  • Year

• There's so much pressure, but I think if you really love it, if you truly love it, and it's your passion to sing, then that's what will get through. I think if you don't have that, you'll realise quickly.

  

  Fleur East
  • Love
  • Passion
  • Pressure

• In high school, my English teacher Celeste McMenamin introduced me to the great novels and Shakespeare and taught me how to write. Essays, poetry, critical analysis. Writing is a skill that was painful then but a love of mine now.

  

  Aaron Lazar
  • Great
  • Writing
  • School

• I think it's difficult to do fashion for men, because either you become very over-homosexual fashion or very boring fashion. You don't want a boy who looks 15 in a little pair of shorts with some strange art... But to see just a jacket and tie is boring.

  

  Carine Roitfeld
  • Men
  • Art
  • Fashion

• I've never asked a player if they would sign my shoe.

  

  Landon Donovan
  • Player
  • Never
  • Shoe

• Risk is to do something that 99 percent of the time would be a failure.

  

  Ferran Adria
  • Time
  • Risk
  • Failure

• To say that people would cease to come to California if they would have to pay more taxes is to underestimate the advantages of being in California - mightily.

  

  Warren Beatty
  • People
  • California
  • Taxes

• What surprises me, what amazes me, is that it seems the military people were expecting to stumble on large quantities of gas, chemical weapons and biological weapons.

  

  Hans Blix
  • People
  • Me
  • Military

• I'm proud of 'Fifty Shades of Grey.' I don't need to distance myself from that. The more work I do, the more the general public sees the different things I can do. Do I think it opened doors? Yeah. More people know my name.

  

  Dakota Johnson
  • People
  • Work
  • Different

• There was one very special scene at the end of the film. My character, Zhao Di, has been sick. She wakes up and her mother tells her that the man she loves has come back from the city and had spent the day by her bedside.

  

  Zhang Ziyi
  • Up
  • She
  • Character

• Theosophy, on earth, is like the white ray of the spectrum, and each religion only one of the seven colours.

  

  H. P. Blavatsky
  • Earth

• I'm a big shoe guy, too. I have far too many pairs. Whenever there's a new style out, I'll text my stylist: 'Can we get a pair of those?'

  

  Joe Jonas Jonas Brothers
  • Guy
  • Style
  • Text

• Did you figure out the second head fake? This talk's not for you. It's for my kids.

  

  Randy Pausch
  • Kids
  • Fake

• Once in pre-war days, when curiously-bonneted women drivers were familiar sights at the taxi-wheels, I cried out to one in my dismay: 'Is there no speed limit in this mad city?''Oh, yes, monsieur,' she answered sweetly over her shoulder, 'but no one has ever succeeded in reaching it.'

  

  Alexander Woollcott
  • Women
  • She
  • War

• For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.

  

  W. Somerset Maugham
  • Life
  • Real
  • Study