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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
Life
Intelligence
Failure
Inspirational
Persons
Mediocre
Best
Mediocrity
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Always
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More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
W. Somerset Maugham
He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it must cease one day or another. He looked forward to that day with eager longing. Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful existence on his life's blood it absorbed his existence so intensely that he could take pleasure in nothing else.
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Success. I don't believe it has any effect on me. For one thing I always expected it.
W. Somerset Maugham
Art, unless it leads to right action, is no more than the opium of an intelligentsia.
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Self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion.
W. Somerset Maugham
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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A soul is a troublesome possession, and when man developed it he lost the Garden of Eden.
W. Somerset Maugham
If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.
W. Somerset Maugham
A good rule for writers: do not explain overmuch.
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A writer need not devour a whole sheep in order to know what mutton tastes like, but he must at least eat a chop. Unless he gets his facts right, his imagination will lead him into all kinds of nonsense, and the facts he is most likely to get right are the facts of his own experience.
W. Somerset Maugham
Love is what happens to men and women who don't know each other.
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Has it occurred to you that transmigration is at once an explanation and a justification of the evil of the world? If the evils we suffer are the result of sins committed in our past lives, we can bear them with resignation and hope that if in this one we strive toward virtue out future lives will be less afflicted.
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By the time an actor knows how to act any sort of part he is often too old to act any but a few.
W. Somerset Maugham
You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.
W. Somerset Maugham
It must be that to govern a nation you need a specific talent and that this may very well exist without general ability.
W. Somerset Maugham
I'm afraid you've thought me a bigger fool than I am.
W. Somerset Maugham
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.
W. Somerset Maugham
There's nothing the world loves more than a ready-made description which they can hang on to a man, and so save themselves all trouble in future.
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A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing.
W. Somerset Maugham
Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.
W. Somerset Maugham
