Quote

People talk of beauty lightly, and having no feeling for words, they use that one carelessly, so that it loses its force and the thing it stands for, sharing its name with a hundred trivial objects, is deprived of dignity. They call beautiful a dress, a dog, a sermon and when they are face to face with Beauty cannot recognise it.

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
Name
Stands
Carelessly
Words
Beauty
Dress
Sermon
Force
Feeling
Dresses
Lightly
Use
Names
Dignity
Trivial
Feelings
Call
Dog
Sermons
Beautiful
Talk
Objects
Recognise
Cannot
Face
Hundred
Deprived
Thing
Loses
Sharing
People
Faces

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I am afraid of people with too much charm. They devour you. In the end you are made a sacrifice to the exercise of their fascinating gift and their insincerity.
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I don't think that women ought to sit down at table with men. It ruins conversation and I'm sure it's very bad for them. It puts ideas in their heads, and women are never at ease with themselves when they have ideas.
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A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.
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The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
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There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
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Genius is talent provided with ideals. Genius starves while talent wears purple and fine linen. The man of genius of today will infifty years' time be in most cases no more than a man of talent.
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In heaven, when the blessed use the telephone they will say what they have to say and not a word besides.
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Success. I don't believe it has any effect on me. For one thing I always expected it.
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It's always difficult to make conversation with a drunk, and there's no denying it, the sober are at a disadvantage with him.
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He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it must cease one day or another. He looked forward to that day with eager longing. Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful existence on his life's blood it absorbed his existence so intensely that he could take pleasure in nothing else.
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It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled in them, and each time they come into contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.
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Throw yourself into the hurly-burly of life. It doesn't matter how many mistakes you make, what unhappiness you have to undergo. It is all your material ... Don't wait for experience to come to you go out after experience. Experience is your material.
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There is only one way to win hearts and that is to make oneself like unto those of whom one would be loved.
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You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.
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Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
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The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.
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if you'd ever had a grown-up daughter you'd know that by comparison a bucking steer is easy to manage. And as to knowing what goes on inside her - well, it's much better to pretend you're the simple, innocent old fool she almost certainly takes you for.
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Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
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The dead look so terribly dead when they're dead.
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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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