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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
Happens
Self
Ideal
Men
Ideals
Think
Perfection
Thinking
Objects
Greatest
Happen
Wrong
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
Great writers create writers of smaller gifts copy
W. Somerset Maugham
Was it necessary to tell me that you wanted nothing in the world but me?' The corners of his mouth drooped peevishly. Oh, my dear, it's rather hard to take quite literally the things a man says when he's in love with you.' Didn't you mean them?' At the moment.
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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.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is clear that men accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure, but only because they expect a greater pleasure in the future. Often the pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation of the rule.
W. Somerset Maugham
The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psychopathologist the unspeakable.
W. Somerset Maugham
It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, 'I don't know.'
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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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Beauty is also a Gift of God, one of the most rare and precious, and we should be thankful if we are happy enough to possess it and thankful, if we are not, that others possess it for our pleasure.
W. Somerset Maugham
It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection.
W. Somerset Maugham
There in the mist, enormous, majestic, silent and terrible, stood the Great Wall of China. Solitarily, with the indifference of nature herself, it crept up the mountain side and slipped down to the depth of the valley.
W. Somerset Maugham
Sherry, the civilized drink.
W. Somerset Maugham
The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.
W. Somerset Maugham
The last words he said to me when I bade him good-night were: Tell Amy it's no good coming after me. Anyhow, I shall change my hotel, so she wouldn't be able to find me.' My own impression is that she's well rid of you,' I said. My dear fellow, I only hope you'll be able to make her see it. But women are very unintelligent.
W. Somerset Maugham
The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.
W. Somerset Maugham
Writing is the supreme solace.
W. Somerset Maugham
In the conduct of life we make use of deliberation to justify ourselves in doing what we want to do.
W. Somerset Maugham
Look after your laundry, and your soul will look after itself.
W. Somerset Maugham
There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed.
W. Somerset Maugham
It does the heart good to look at you.
W. Somerset Maugham
When things are at their worst, I find something always happens.
W. Somerset Maugham
