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Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull.
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
Humility
Perfection
Perfectionism
Defect
Defects
Grave
Graves
Dull
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, depreciating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a common room.
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A state of reverie does not avoid reality, it accedes to reality.
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It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic. - Of Human Bondage
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The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.
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Art, if it is to be reckoned as one of the great values of life, must teach man humility, tolerance, wisdom and magnanimity. The value of art is not beauty, but right action.
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The end of culture is right living
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I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell... their heart's in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.
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Charm and nothing but charm at last grows a little tiresome. It's a relief then to deal with a man who isn't quite so delightful but a little more sincere.
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I am sick of this way of life. The weariness and sadness of old age make it intolerable. I have walked with death in hand, and death's own hand is warmer than my own. I don't wish to live any longer.
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The first duty of a woman is to be pretty, the second is to be well-groomed, and the third is never to contradict.
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No man in his heart is quite so cynical as a well-bred woman.
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Life isn't long enough for love and art.
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When she liked anyone it was quite natural for her to go to bed with him. She never thought twice about it. It was not vice it wasn't lasciviousness it was her nature. She gave herself as naturally as the sun gives heat or the flowers their perfume. It was a pleasure to her and she liked to give pleasure to others.
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Art, unless it leads to right action, is no more than the opium of an intelligentsia.
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The dead look so terribly dead when they're dead.
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Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.
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The nature of men and women - their essential nature - is so vile and despicable that if you were to portray a person as he really is, no one would believe you.
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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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I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to the universities go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene ... They are scum.
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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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