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Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.
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
Writing
Advantageous
Life
Habits
Useful
Cease
Soon
Habit
Broken
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes...
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I prefer a loose woman to a selfish one and a wanton to a fool.
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Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
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The mathematician who after seeing Phedre asked: 'Qu'est que ca prouve?' was not such a fool as he has been generally made out. No one has ever been able to explain why the Doric temple of Paestum is more beautiful than a glass of cold beer except by bringing in considerations that have nothing to do with beauty.
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A God that can be understood is no God. Who can explain the Infinite in words?
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The great man is too often all of a piece it is the little man that is a bundle of contradictory elements. He is inexhaustible. You never come to the end of the surprises he has in store for you.
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By the time a man notices that he is no longer young, his youth has long since left him.
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if you'd ever had a grown-up daughter you'd know that by comparison a bucking steer is easy to manage. And as to knowing what goes on inside her - well, it's much better to pretend you're the simple, innocent old fool she almost certainly takes you for.
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It requires the feminine temperament to repeat the same thing three times with unabated zest.
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A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country.
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It's always difficult to make conversation with a drunk, and there's no denying it, the sober are at a disadvantage with him.
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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.
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Some American delusions: 1) That there is no class-consciousness in the country. 2) That American coffee is good. 3) That Americans are business-like. 4) That Americans are highly-sexed and that redheads are more highly sexed than others.
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I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that that is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues.
W. Somerset Maugham
It has been said that good prose should resemble the conversation of a well-bred man.
W. Somerset Maugham
No action is in itself good or bad, but only such according to convention.
W. Somerset Maugham
Beauty is an ecstasy it is as simple as hunger.
W. Somerset Maugham
Impropriety is the soul of wit.
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Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure.
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Kant thought things, not because they were true, but because he was Kant.
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