W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut.
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Perhaps the most important use of money - It saves time. Life is so short, and there's so much to do, one can't afford to waste a minute; and just think how much you waste, for instance, in walking from place to place instead of going by bus and in going by bus instead of by taxi.
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The value of culture is its effect on character. It avails nothing unless it ennobles and strengthens that. Its use is for life. Its aim is not beauty but goodness.
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If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.
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Our natural egoism leads us to judge people by their relations to ourselves. We want them to be certain things to us, and for us that is what they are; because the rest of them is no good to us, we ignore it.
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He did not care upon what terms he satisfied his passion. He had even a mad, melodramatic idea to drug her.
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It is not for nothing that artists have called their works the children of their brains and likened the pains of production to the pains of childbirth.
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Loving-kindness is the better part of goodness. It lends grace to the sterner qualities of which this consists.
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Are you sure you can prevent yourself from falling in love one of these days? Such things do happen, you know, even to the most prudent men.' Simon gave him a strange, one might even have thought a hostile, look. I should tear it out of my heart as I'd wrench out of my mouth a rotten tooth.
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Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither.
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And I have the sunset, and the Tuscan wine, and the white teeth of the women in Rome. I am a traveler in Romance.
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Affection is created by habit, community of interests, convenience and the desire of companionship. It is a comfort rather than an exhilaration.
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When a man's in love, he at once makes a pedestal of the Ten Commandments and stands on the top of them with his arms akimbo. When a woman's in love she doesn't care two straws for Thou Shalt and Thou Shalt Not.
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Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical.
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But what is criticism? Criticism is purely destructive; anyone can destroy, but not everyone can build up.
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The ideas for stories that thronged my brain would not let me rest till I had got rid of them by writing them.
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It must be that there is something naturally absurd in a sincere emotion, though why there should be I cannot imagine, unless it is that man, the ephemeral inhabitant of an insignificant planet, with all his pain and all his striving is but a jest in an eternal mind.
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Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, depreciating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a common room.
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In civilized communities men's idiosyncrasies are mitigated by the necessity of conforming to certain rules of behavior. Culture is a mask that hides their faces.
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It is good to be on your guard against an Englishman who speaks French perfectly; he is very likely to be a card-sharper or an attache in the diplomatic service.
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I do not think you want too much sincerity in society. It would be like an iron girder in a house of cards.
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A man ought to work. That's what he's here for. That's how he contributes to the welfare of the community.
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I can only guess that it made the world he went back to...strangely without meaning. Though he lived in it, though he even enjoyed it, it remained utterly remote. I think it had lost sense for him. In his heart was the reflection of a lovely dream that he could never quite recall.
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Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives not by truth but by make-believe.