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Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less.
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
Considering
Talked
Perhaps
Less
Better
Would
Prattle
World
Foolishly
People
Pleasantly
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.
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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.
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It's a funny thing about life if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
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In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.
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The Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the churches make out.
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The officers saluted as she passed and gravely bowed. They walked back across the courtyard and got into their chairs. She saw Waddington light a cigarette. A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.
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D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.
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Almost all the people who’ve had the most effect on me I seem to have met by chance, yet looking back it seems as though I couldn’t but have met them.
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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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You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
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Beauty is an ecstasy it is as simple as hunger.
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The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
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Art is triumphant when it can use convention as an instrument of its own purpose.
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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 practiced at spare moments it is a whole-time job.
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If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.
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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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You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.
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You learn more quickly under the guidance of experienced teachers. You waste a lot of time going down blind alleys if you have no one to lead you.
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I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't.
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Loving-kindness is the better part of goodness. It lends grace to the sterner qualities of which this consists.
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