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I'd sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.

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
Street
Forward
Mangled
Streets
Smashed
Look
Pulp
Looks
Bus
Life
Sooner
Like
Cross
Crosses

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We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house.
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Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.
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No action is in itself good or bad, but only such according to convention.
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The subjunctive mood is in its death throes, and the best thing to do is to put it out of its misery as soon as possible.
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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.
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I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the center of the world.
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Oh, it's always the same,' she sighed, 'if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.
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Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.
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Culture is not just an ornament it is the expression of a nation's character, and at the same time it is a powerful instrument to mould character. The end of culture is right living.
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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.
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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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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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The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
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He found that it was easy to make a heroic gesture, but hard to abide by its results.
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There are few things so pleasant as a picnic eaten in perfect comfort.
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There in the mist, enormous, majestic, silent and terrible, stood the Great Wall of China. Solitarily, with the indifference of nature herself, it crept up the mountain side and slipped down to the depth of the valley.
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