W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

W. Somerset Maugham

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Quotes to Explore

• For me, the greatest good fortune I have being raised by actors is I came in knowing that a career is the ebb and flow.

  

  Laura Dern
  • Good
  • Career
  • Actors

• Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity.

  

  Karen Armstrong
  • People
  • Up
  • Religious

• Anyone can be a Superman, but nobody can be Jackie Chan.

  

  Jackie Chan
  • Superman
  • Nobody
  • Anyone

• We are a pluralist civilisation because we allow mosques to be built in our countries, and we are not going to stop simply because Christian missionaries are thrown into prison in Kabul. If we did so, we, too, would become Taliban.

  

  Umberto Eco
  • Stop
  • Christian
  • Going

• The bodies we have are not made for extended use. We must cope with accumulated DNA damage, cell damage, muscle atrophy, bone loss, decreased muscle mass, and joints worn out from overuse during a lifetime of bipedal locomotion. It might have worked great for prehistoric humans, but it wreaks havoc on our knees and hips.

  

  S. Jay Olshansky
  • Great
  • Loss
  • DNA

• Real tolerance means respecting other people even when they baffle you and you have no idea why they think what they think.

  

  G. Willow Wilson
  • People
  • Real
  • Why

• There's something unnatural about losing a sibling when they're young.

  

  Carlene Carter
  • Young
  • Losing
  • Sibling

• My father instilled in me - of utmost importance and innate in me is the yearning to determine for myself - to define God, to define holiness for myself.

  

  Vera Farmiga
  • God
  • Father
  • Myself

• Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes.

  

  Maggie Smith
  • Mind
  • Speak
  • Voice

• We're trying to create a better world, not a perfect one. It cannot ever be perfect.

  

  Kapil Sibal
  • World
  • Trying
  • Perfect

• All I can say is, I don't encourage younger kids to read my books, and actually, the biggest age group on my Facebook page is 25- to 35-year-old women.

  

  Abbi Glines
  • Women
  • Kids
  • Age

• Fears are nothing more than a state of mind.

  

  Napoleon Hill
  • Mind
  • Fear
  • Nothing

• What I've realized is that we're our own harshest critics. We give ourselves limitations. But I want to push through that wall, on a creative and personal level.

  

  Carla Gugino
  • Want
  • Wall
  • Creative

• It seems to me every one of us is doing something meaningful for this world.

  

  Yani Tseng
  • World
  • Me
  • Meaningful

• I think being a mother helps keep your feet on the ground. There's very little dignity in parenthood. It's a great leveller.

  

  Frances O'Grady
  • Great
  • Mother
  • Feet

• I want to prove you don't need to have academic syntax to be intelligent.

  

  Eddie Huang
  • Want
  • Intelligent
  • Prove

• No one is safe from religious ideas and confessional phenomena. Neither you nor I. We can fall victim to them when we least expect it. It's like Mao flu, or being struck by lightning. You're utterly helpless. Exposed. As I see it today, any relapse is utterly out of the question. But I can't say it's out of the question tomorrow.

  

  Ingmar Bergman
  • Today
  • Question
  • Fall

• We have always focused on degrees only. Now is the time to focus on skill development that will bring employment to our youth. If we have to compete with China then we have to focus on three things-skill, scale and speed. We need better skill, greater scale and faster speed.

  

  Narendra Modi
  • Time
  • Focus

• I was number one on the Who's Likely To Die list for 10 years. I mean, I was really disappointed when I fell off the list.

  

  Keith Richards The Rolling Stones
  • Die

• Every citizen knows his place. He is born to that place, and the elaborate discipline of training and education and surgery he undergoes fits him at last so completely to it that he has neither ideas nor organs for any purpose beyond it.

  

  H. G. Wells
  • Education
  • Purpose
  • Training

• A society that does not correctly interpret and appreciate its past cannot understand its present fortunes and adversities and can be caught unawares in a fast changing world.

  

  Ibrahim Babangida
  • World
  • Society
  • Past

• Bodily discomfort and emotional fear and attachment make the dying uncomfortable and fearful. So, to help those dying people, I think modern medical science has a lot of facilities to reduce pain, or perhaps not to reduce pain, but not to experience pain.

  

  Lobsang Tenzin
  • People
  • Experience
  • Help

• In New York, after that famous home run, they expected me to be up there every year. That homer raised me to a high level, with the top guys in the game.

  

  Bobby Thomson
  • Up
  • Home
  • High

• I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

  

  W. Somerset Maugham