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When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch's statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
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
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Physician Writer
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Paris
France
W. Somerset Maugham
Somerset Maugham
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An art is only great and significant if it is one that all may enjoy. The art of a clique is but a plaything.
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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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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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What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?
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It is not for nothing that artists have called their works the children of their brains and likened the pains of production to the pains of childbirth.
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There's no one as transparent as the person who thinks he's devilish deep.
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For my part I cannot believe in a God who is angry with me because I do not believe in him. I cannot believe in a God who is less tolerant than I. I cannot believe in a God who has neither humour nor common sense.
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I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
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Why did you look at the sunset?' Philip answered with his mouth full: Because I was happy.
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Make him laugh and he will think you a trivial fellow, but bore him in the right way and your reputation is assured.
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I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the center of the world.
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If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
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One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her.
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There are men whose sense of humour is so ill developed that they still bear a grudge against Copernicus because he dethroned them from the central position in the universe. They feel it a personal affront that they can no longer consider themselves the pivot upon which turns the whole of created things.
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You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to such temptation.' Well, I know I'm not a Christian and I'm beginning to doubt whether I'm a gentleman,' said Philip.
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No egoism is so insufferable as that of the Christian with regard to his soul.
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Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. It's a funny thing about life if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
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You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.
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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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