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If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.
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
Speech
Humans
Unless
Something
Nobody
Would
Silence
Lose
Loses
Spokes
Race
Spoke
Use
Soon
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
Considering how foolishly people act and how pleasantly they prattle, perhaps it would be better for the world if they talked more and did less.
W. Somerset Maugham
No man in his heart is quite so cynical as a well-bred woman.
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Marco Polo tells the tale of The Old Man in the Mountains and how he recruits new members to his Band of Assassins by means of drugs, beautiful women, lush gardens, and religious promises. The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
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No author can create a character out of nothing. He must have a model to give him a starting point but then his imagination goes to work, he builds him up, adding a trait here, a trait there, which his model did not possess.
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There are many foolish people in the world and when a man in a rather high position puts on no frills, slaps them on the back, and tells them he'll do anything in the world for them, they are very likely to think him clever.
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It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.
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I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
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A man ought to work. That's what he's here for. That's how he contributes to the welfare of the community.
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There are directors who desire to be artistic. It is pathetic to compare the seriousness of their aim with the absurdity of their attainment.
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For the complete life, the perfect pattern includes old age as well as youth and maturity.
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Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
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Love is not always blind and there are few things that cause greater wretchedness than to love with all your heart someone who you know is unworthy of love.
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The spirit is often most free when the body is satiated with pleasure indeed, sometimes the stars shine more brightly seen from the gutter than from the hilltop.
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Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.
W. Somerset Maugham
You tend to close your eyes to truth, beauty and goodness because they give no scope to your sense of the ridiculous.
W. Somerset Maugham
Great writers create writers of smaller gifts copy
W. Somerset Maugham
A Unitarian very earnestly disbelieves what everyone else believes.
W. Somerset Maugham
He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.
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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.
W. Somerset Maugham
Common-sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncrasies of individual character and the opinion of the newspapers.
W. Somerset Maugham
