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Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.
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
Talking
Heroes
Good
Speaking
Things
Generally
People
Piece
Hero
Villains
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Pieces
Novelists
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
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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We do not write because we want to we write because we have to.
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Loving-kindness is the better part of goodness.
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For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.
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Sherry, the civilized drink.
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A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.
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Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul.
W. Somerset Maugham
A God that can be understood is no God. Who can explain the Infinite in words?
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Art is triumphant when it can use convention as an instrument of its own purpose.
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It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.
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Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.
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The artist can within limits make what he likes of his life... It is only the artist, and maybe the criminal, who can make his own.
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As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue.
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There are men whose sense of humour is so ill developed that they still bear a grudge against Copernicus because he dethroned them from the central position in the universe. They feel it a personal affront that they can no longer consider themselves the pivot upon which turns the whole of created things.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is good to be on your guard against an Englishman who speaks French perfectly he is very likely to be a card-sharper or an attache in the diplomatic service.
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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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She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.
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We find things beautiful because we recognize them and contrariwise we find things beautiful because their novelty surprises us.
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I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul's good to do each day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed.
W. Somerset Maugham
You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to such temptation.' Well, I know I'm not a Christian and I'm beginning to doubt whether I'm a gentleman,' said Philip.
W. Somerset Maugham
