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She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.
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
Sea
Channel
Powerful
Strokes
White
Breast
Made
Sarcastic
Plunged
Way
Breasts
Platitudes
Confident
Swimmer
Towards
Stroke
Obvious
Cliffs
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
[Money] is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets.
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Art is triumphant when it can use convention as an instrument of its own purpose.
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Failure make people bitter and cruel. Success improves the character of the man.
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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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He found that it was easy to make a heroic gesture, but hard to abide by its results.
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She alone had been blind to his merit. Why? Because he loved her and she did not love him. What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?
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The mathematician who after seeing Phedre asked: 'Qu'est que ca prouve?' was not such a fool as he has been generally made out. No one has ever been able to explain why the Doric temple of Paestum is more beautiful than a glass of cold beer except by bringing in considerations that have nothing to do with beauty.
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It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
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Loving-kindness is the better part of goodness.
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It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humour.
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The value of culture is its effect on character. It avails nothing unless it ennobles and strengthens that. Its use is for life. Its aim is not beauty but goodness.
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But the only important thing in a book is the meaning it has for you it may have other and much more profound meanings for the critic, but at second-hand they can be of small service to you.
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She [Sadie Thompson] gathered herself together. No one could describe the scorn of her expression or the contemptuous hatred she put into her answer. You men! You filthy dirty pigs! You're all the same, all of you. Pigs! Pigs!
W. Somerset Maugham
Impropriety is the soul of wit.
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The world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willing avoids the sight of distress.
W. Somerset Maugham
A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.
W. Somerset Maugham
You will have to learn many tedious things,...which you will forget the moment you have passed your final examination, but in anatomy it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.
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Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.
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There are directors who desire to be artistic. It is pathetic to compare the seriousness of their aim with the absurdity of their attainment.
W. Somerset Maugham
He exulted in the possession of himself once more he realized how much of the delight of the world he had lost when he was absorbed in that madness which they called love he had had enough of it he did not want to be in love anymore if love was that.
W. Somerset Maugham
