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

• Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask. ... For this reason there is no truth comparable to sorrow. There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. Other things may be illusions of the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other, but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain.

  

  Oscar Wilde
  • Truth
  • Joy
  • Laughter

• The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!

  

  Charles Darwin
  • Sick

• It's typical of record companies. They sign you because you're unique, and then they want to put you in a mold so they can sell records.

  

  Al Jourgensen 1000 Homo DJs
  • Unique
  • Record
  • Companies

• What I did before in my career you can pretty much throw out the window. Out of sight, out of mind.

  

  Jake Arrieta
  • Mind
  • Pretty
  • Career

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

  

  W. Somerset Maugham