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Self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion.
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
Passion
Might
Self
Introvert
Bondage
Surrender
Passionate
Active
Control
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Of all the hokum with which this country [America] is riddled, the most odd is the common notion that it is free of class distinctions.
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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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Are you sure you can prevent yourself from falling in love one of these days? Such things do happen, you know, even to the most prudent men.' Simon gave him a strange, one might even have thought a hostile, look. I should tear it out of my heart as I'd wrench out of my mouth a rotten tooth.
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Impropriety is the soul of wit.
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It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it.
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Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.
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When you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right.
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Perfect is determined in shortened measures of time, not over long periods of time or lifetimes. It would be unnatural.
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When you're eighteen your emotions are violent, but they're not durable.
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I never met an author who admitted that people did not buy his book because it was dull.
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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 must be that there is something naturally absurd in a sincere emotion, though why there should be I cannot imagine, unless it is that man, the ephemeral inhabitant of an insignificant planet, with all his pain and all his striving is but a jest in an eternal mind.
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When we come to judge others it is not by ourselves as we really are that we judge them, but by an image that we have formed of ourselves from which we have left out everything that offends our vanity or would discredit us in the eyes of the world.
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If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one.
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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.
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I like manual labor. Whenever I've got waterlogged with study, I've taken a spell of it and found it spiritually invigorating.
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It is astonishing how many books I find there is no need for me to read at all.
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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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The great critic … must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.
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