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The great man is too often all of a piece it is the little man that is a bundle of contradictory elements. He is inexhaustible. You never come to the end of the surprises he has in store for you.
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
Often
Contradictory
Ends
Store
Littles
Stores
Little
Surprise
Come
Greatness
Bundle
Great
Piece
Inexhaustible
Never
Elements
Bundles
Men
Pieces
Surprises
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
Evil is a necessary part of the order of the universe.
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Kant thought things, not because they were true, but because he was Kant.
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The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.
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In religion above all things the only thing of use is an objective truth. The only God that is of use is a being who is personal, supreme and good, and whose existence is as certain as that two and two make four.
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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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What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.
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The passing moment is all we can be sure of it is only common sense to extract its utmost value from it.
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Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure.
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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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The well dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice
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Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment.
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The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
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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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You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.
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There's nothing the world loves more than a ready-made description which they can hang on to a man, and so save themselves all trouble in future.
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Words have weight, sound and appearance it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.
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Women are constantly trying to commit suicide for love, but generally they take care not to succeed.
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A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country.
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There is no need for the writer to eat a whole sheep to be able to tell you what mutton tastes like. It is enough if he eats a cutlet. But he should do that.
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Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
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