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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.
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
Think
Perfection
Thinking
Objects
Greatest
Happen
Wrong
Happens
Self
Ideal
Men
Ideals
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I [Death] was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
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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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Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.
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Through the history of the world there have always been exploiters and exploited. There always will be ... because the great mass of men are made by nature to be slaves, they are unfit to control themselves, and for their own good need masters.
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It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who makes me laugh.
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To write simply is as difficult as to be good.
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There are few things so pleasant as a picnic eaten in perfect comfort.
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Self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion.
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A woman may be as wicked as she likes, but if she isn't pretty it won't do her much good.
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The novel may stimulate you to think. It may satisfy your aesthetic sense. It may arouse your moral emotions. But if it does not entertain you it is a bad novel.
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Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.
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They say a woman always remembers her first lover with affection but perhaps she does not always remember him.
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It must be that to govern a nation you need a specific talent and that this may very well exist without general ability.
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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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Sentimentality is the only sentiment that rubs you the wrong way.
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Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art. ~Waddington
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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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There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity. I recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none?
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The ideas for stories that thronged my brain would not let me rest till I had got rid of them by writing them.
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I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
W. Somerset Maugham
