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It is clear that men accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure, but only because they expect a greater pleasure in the future. Often the pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation of the rule.

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
Often
Accepting
Calculations
Ideas
Pleasure
Immediate
Country
Greater
Error
Children
Clear
Errors
Refutation
Men
Dies
Likes
Cabbage
Rather
Rule
Calculation
Future
Expect
Puzzled
Pain
Accept
Illusory

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In religion above all things the only thing of use is an objective truth. The only God that is of use is a being who is personal, supreme and good, and whose existence is as certain as that two and two make four.
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I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
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Loving-kindness is the better part of goodness.
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The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.
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There is only one way to win hearts and that is to make oneself like unto those of whom one would be loved.
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I [Death] was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
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There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed.
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The novel may stimulate you to think. It may satisfy your aesthetic sense. It may arouse your moral emotions. But if it does not entertain you it is a bad novel.
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Thank God, I can look at a sunset now without having to think how to describe it
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Advice to first year medical students: In anatomy, it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.
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and he loved her suddenly because she loved him.
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It must be that to govern a nation you need a specific talent and that this may very well exist without general ability.
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One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one's soul.
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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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The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.
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Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
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Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.
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He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it must cease one day or another. He looked forward to that day with eager longing. Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful existence on his life's blood it absorbed his existence so intensely that he could take pleasure in nothing else.
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Beauty is also a Gift of God, one of the most rare and precious, and we should be thankful if we are happy enough to possess it and thankful, if we are not, that others possess it for our pleasure.
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