W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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Do you absolutely despise me, Walter?" "No." He hesitated and his voice was strange. "I despise myself.
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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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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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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 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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I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to the universities go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene ... They are scum.
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You know, the Philistines have long since discarded the rack and stake as a means of suppressing the opinions they feared: they've discovered a much more deadly weapon of destruction -- the wisecrack.
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The inclination to digress is human. But the dramatist must avoid it even more strenuously than the saint must avoid sin, for while sin may be venial, digression is mortal.
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I am sick of this way of life. The weariness and sadness of old age make it intolerable. I have walked with death in hand, and death's own hand is warmer than my own. I don't wish to live any longer.
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What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?
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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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Reserve is an artificial quality that is developed in most of us but as the result of innumerable rebuffs.
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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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The spirit is often most free when the body is satiated with pleasure; indeed, sometimes the stars shine more brightly seen from the gutter than from the hilltop.