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As we grow older we become more conscious of the complexity, incoherence, and unreasonableness of human beings this indeed is the only excuse that offers for the middle-aged or elderly writer whose thoughts should more properly be turned to graver matters, occupying himself with the trivial concerns of imaginary people.

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
Human
Mankind
Concern
Sensible
Occupying
Humans
Writer
Offers
Complexity
Aged
Matter
Fiction
Creatures
Excuse
Trivial
Real
Grow
Figures
Significant
Elderly
Men
Study
Beings
Indeed
Concerns
People
Middle
Conscious
Matters
Irrational
Grows
Whose
Turned
Imaginary
Graver
Become
Thoughts
Older
Properly
Incoherence

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The well dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice
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No woman is worth more than a fiver unless you're in love with her. Then she's worth all she costs you.
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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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But I am not sure it would contain any short stories. For the short story is a minor art, and it must content itself with moving, exciting and amusing the reader. ...I do not think that there is any (short story) that will give the reader that thrill, that rapture, that fruitful energy which great art can produce.
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Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither.
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I have always been convinced that if a woman once made up her mind to marry a man, nothing but instant flight could save him.
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It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.
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I never spend more than one hour in a gallery. That is as long as one's power of appreciation persists.
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Perhaps the most important use of money - It saves time. Life is so short, and there's so much to do, one can't afford to waste a minute and just think how much you waste, for instance, in walking from place to place instead of going by bus and in going by bus instead of by taxi.
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It does the heart good to look at you.
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A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life.
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We learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.
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A man filled with meat turns his back on the dry bones of political doctrine. Fanatical devotion to the ruling party comes more readily from the materially deprived At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
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There is no cruelty greater than a woman's to a man who loves her and whom she does not love she has no kindness then, no tolerance even, she has only an insane irritation.
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Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure.
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Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more telling. To know that a thing actually happened gives it a poignancy, touches a chord, which a piece of acknowledged fiction misses. It is to touch this chord that some authors have done everything they could to give you the impression that they are telling the plain truth.
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If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
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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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You must not pursue a success, but fly from it.
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