W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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No woman is worth more than a fiver unless you're in love with her. Then she's worth all she costs you.
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The modern clergyman has acquired in his study of the science which I believe is called exegesis an astonishing facility for explaining things away.
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A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.
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It's always difficult to make conversation with a drunk, and there's no denying it, the sober are at a disadvantage with him.
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In heaven, when the blessed use the telephone they will say what they have to say and not a word besides.
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No author can create a character out of nothing. He must have a model to give him a starting point; but then his imagination goes to work, he builds him up, adding a trait here, a trait there, which his model did not possess.
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If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.
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It must be that to govern a nation you need a specific talent and that this may very well exist without general ability.
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Art, if it is to be reckoned as one of the great values of life, must teach man humility, tolerance, wisdom and magnanimity. The value of art is not beauty, but right action.
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All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it's just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.
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But Philip was impatient with himself; he called to mind his idea of the pattern of life: the unhappiness he had suffered was no more than part of a decoration which was elaborate and beautiful; he told himself strenuously that he must accept with gaiety everything, dreariness and excitement, pleasure and pain, because it added to the richness of the design.
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The mathematician who after seeing Phedre asked: 'Qu'est que ca prouve?' was not such a fool as he has been generally made out. No one has ever been able to explain why the Doric temple of Paestum is more beautiful than a glass of cold beer except by bringing in considerations that have nothing to do with beauty.
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You're beginning to dislike me, aren't you? Well, dislike me. It doesn't make any difference to me now.
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A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country.
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Beauty is also a Gift of God, one of the most rare and precious, and we should be thankful if we are happy enough to possess it and thankful, if we are not, that others possess it for our pleasure.
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Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experience he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours' relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey.
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You cannot write well or much (and I venture the opinion that you cannot write well unless you write much) unless you form a habit.
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She says it's really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.
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I know that I shall die struggling for breath, and I know that I shall be horribly afraid. I know that I shall not be able to keep myself from regretting bitterly the life that has brought me to such a pass; but I disown that regret. I now, weak, old, diseased, poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing.
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Evil can be condoned only if in the beyond it is compensated by good and god himself needs immortality to vindicate his ways to man.
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We can none of us step into the same river twice, but the river flows on and the other river we step into is cool and refreshing, too
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There was once a professor of law who said to his students. When you are fighting a case, if you have facts on your side hammer them into the jury, and if you have the law on your side hammer it into the judge. But if you have neither the facts nor the law, asked one of his listeners? Then hammer the hell into the table, answered the professor.
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When married people don't get on they can separate, but if they're not married it's impossible. It's a tie that only death can sever.
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In religion above all things the only thing of use is an objective truth. The only God that is of use is a being who is personal, supreme and good, and whose existence is as certain as that two and two make four.