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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
Surrender
Passionate
Active
Control
Passion
Might
Self
Introvert
Bondage
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
I happen to think we’ve set our ideal on the wrong objects I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can set before himself is self-perfection.
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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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Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.
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Men seek but one thing in life - their pleasure.
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Our natural egoism leads us to judge people by their relations to ourselves. We want them to be certain things to us, and for us that is what they are because the rest of them is no good to us, we ignore it.
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To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.
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Most people are such fools that it is really no great compliment to say that someone is above the average.
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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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You tend to close your eyes to truth, beauty and goodness because they give no scope to your sense of the ridiculous.
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She loved three things — a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man.
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Now the answer ... is plain, but it is so unpalatable that most men will not face it. There is no reason for life and life has no meaning.
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The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.
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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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Tolerance is another word for indifference.
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Her tears were partly tears of happiness, for she felt that the strangeness between them was gone. She loved him now with a new love because he had made her suffer.
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Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practiced at spare moments it is a whole-time job.
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The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.
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The officers saluted as she passed and gravely bowed. They walked back across the courtyard and got into their chairs. She saw Waddington light a cigarette. A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.
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I could have forgiven it if he'd fallen desperately in love with someone and gone off with her. I should have thought that natural. I shouldn't really have blamed him. I should have thought he was led away. Men are so weak, and women are so unscrupulous.
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There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.
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