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Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
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
Persons
Mediocre
Best
Mediocrity
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Always
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Inspirational
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
The average American can get into the kingdom of heaven much more easily than he can get into the Boulevard St. Germain.
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There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.
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Comedy appeals to the collective mind of the audience and this grows fatigued while farce appeals to a more robust organ, their collective belly.
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Women are strange little beasts,' he said to Dr. Coutras. 'You can treat them like dogs, you can beat them till your arm aches, and still they love you.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'Of course, it is one of the most absurd illusions of Christianity that they have souls.
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You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to such temptation.' Well, I know I'm not a Christian and I'm beginning to doubt whether I'm a gentleman,' said Philip.
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The last words he said to me when I bade him good-night were: Tell Amy it's no good coming after me. Anyhow, I shall change my hotel, so she wouldn't be able to find me.' My own impression is that she's well rid of you,' I said. My dear fellow, I only hope you'll be able to make her see it. But women are very unintelligent.
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Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.
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I wonder how anyone can have the face to condemn others when he reflects upon his own thoughts.
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It must be that to govern a nation you need a specific talent and that this may very well exist without general ability.
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There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
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We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.
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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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A novelist must preserve a childlike belief in the importance of things which common sense considers of no great consequence.
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Common sense and nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult.
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He exulted in the possession of himself once more he realized how much of the delight of the world he had lost when he was absorbed in that madness which they called love he had had enough of it he did not want to be in love anymore if love was that.
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There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action.
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The drama is make-believe. It does not deal with truth but with effect.
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Imagination grows by exercise.
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Genius is talent provided with ideals. Genius starves while talent wears purple and fine linen. The man of genius of today will infifty years' time be in most cases no more than a man of talent.
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The dead look so terribly dead when they're dead.
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