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There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
W. Somerset Maugham
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W. Somerset Maugham
Age: 90 †
Born: 1874
Born: January 1
Died: 1965
Died: January 1
Army Scout
Literary Critic
Novelist
Physician Writer
Playwright
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Paris
France
W. Somerset Maugham
Somerset Maugham
Unfortunately
Rules
Novel
Three
Writing
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't.
W. Somerset Maugham
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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As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.
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In the conduct of life we make use of deliberation to justify ourselves in doing what we want to do.
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People who ask for your criticism want only praise.
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From old habit, unconsciously he thanked God that he no longer believed in Him.
W. Somerset Maugham
The great critic … must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.
W. Somerset Maugham
Yet magic is no more than the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Will, love and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses and whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician. Magic has but one dogma, namely, that the seen is the measure of the unseen.
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Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.
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When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself?
W. Somerset Maugham
Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it.
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Life isn't long enough for love and art.
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A state of reverie does not avoid reality, it accedes to reality.
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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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He found that it was easy to make a heroic gesture, but hard to abide by its results.
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The well dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice
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Words have weight, sound and appearance it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.
W. Somerset Maugham
The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.
W. Somerset Maugham
A novelist must preserve a childlike belief in the importance of things which common sense considers of no great consequence.
W. Somerset Maugham
