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Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation.
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
Individual
Evolved
Preservation
Individuality
Ethics
Morality
Rules
Conscience
Community
Guardian
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Kant thought things, not because they were true, but because he was Kant.
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[Money] is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets.
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As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue.
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I've met so many people, often the scum of the earth, and found them, you know, quite decent. I am an uncomfortable stranger to moral indignation.
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When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself?
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Comedy appeals to the collective mind of the audience and this grows fatigued while farce appeals to a more robust organ, their collective belly.
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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 great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.
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In the conduct of life we make use of deliberation to justify ourselves in doing what we want to do.
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Look after your laundry, and your soul will look after itself.
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Only mediocre people are at the best all the time.
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Reserve is an artificial quality that is developed in most of us but as the result of innumerable rebuffs.
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Never pause unless you have a reason for it, but when you pause, pause as long as you can.
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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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I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell... their heart's in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.
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Music-hall songs provide the dull with wit, just as proverbs provide them with wisdom.
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A good rule for writers: do not explain overmuch.
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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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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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The normal is what you find but rarely. The normal is an ideal. It is a picture that one fabricates of the average characteristics of men, and to find them all in a single man is hardly to be expected.
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