W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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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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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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'You bloody fool, you've killed the wrong man.'
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Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
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In art honesty is not only the best but the only policy.
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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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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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The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
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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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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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We have long passed the Victorian Era when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.
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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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Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
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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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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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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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There are men who are possessed by an urge so strong to do some particular thing that they can't help themselves, they've got to do it. They're prepared to sacrifice everything to satisfy their yearning.
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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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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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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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We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.
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An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
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It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late.