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The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
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
Principle
Principles
Thing
Always
Expedience
Expediency
Sacrificed
Useful
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos.
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I've met so many people, often the scum of the earth, and found them, you know, quite decent. I am an uncomfortable stranger to moral indignation.
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Do you like card tricks? No, I hate card tricks, I answered. Well, I`ll just show you this one. He showed me three.
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A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves what everyone else believes.
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Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
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A good rule for writers: do not explain overmuch.
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Of all the hokum with which this country [America] is riddled, the most odd is the common notion that it is free of class distinctions.
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The humour of Dostoievsky is the humour of a barloafer who ties a kettle to a dog's tail.
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Was it necessary to tell me that you wanted nothing in the world but me?' The corners of his mouth drooped peevishly. Oh, my dear, it's rather hard to take quite literally the things a man says when he's in love with you.' Didn't you mean them?' At the moment.
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We do not write because we want to we write because we have to.
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There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity. I recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none?
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The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
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She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.
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It must be that there is something naturally absurd in a sincere emotion, though why there should be I cannot imagine, unless it is that man, the ephemeral inhabitant of an insignificant planet, with all his pain and all his striving is but a jest in an eternal mind.
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Well, you know when people are no good at anything else they become writers.
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When a woman loves you she's not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she's weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her.
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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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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
Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.
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The value of money is that with it we can tell any man to go to the devil. It is the sixth sense which enables you to enjoy the other five.
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