W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
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The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.
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Nothing in the world is permanent, and we're foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we're still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it. If change is of the essence of existence one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premise of our philosophy.
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I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me.
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'You bloody fool, you've killed the wrong man.'
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He loved her so passionately he wanted her to be one soul and one body with him; and he was conscious that here, with those deep roots attaching her to the native life, she would always keep something from him.
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In art honesty is not only the best but the only policy.
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I have always been convinced that if a woman once made up her mind to marry a man nothing but instant flight could save him.
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There are men whose sense of humour is so ill developed that they still bear a grudge against Copernicus because he dethroned them from the central position in the universe. They feel it a personal affront that they can no longer consider themselves the pivot upon which turns the whole of created things.
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If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom, and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
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There are directors who desire to be artistic. It is pathetic to compare the seriousness of their aim with the absurdity of their attainment.
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Death doesn't affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn't concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.
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Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
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At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
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Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.
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She had a very agreeable smile; it did not light up her face suddenly, but seemed rather to suffuse it by degrees with charm. It hesitated for a moment about her lips and then slowly travelled to those great shining eyes of hers and there softly lingered.
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Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.
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Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practised at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.
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It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.
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Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.
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It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late.
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Don't you know? Because American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.
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Life isn't long enough for love and art.
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He made one laugh sometimes by speaking the truth, but this is a form of humour which gains its force only by its unusualness; it would cease to amuse if it were commonly practised.