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Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.
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
Improvisation
Largely
Conduct
Perpetual
Cute
Controlled
Chance
Life
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me.
W. Somerset Maugham
What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature.
W. Somerset Maugham
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.
W. Somerset Maugham
Make him laugh and he will think you a trivial fellow, but bore him in the right way and your reputation is assured.
W. Somerset Maugham
If truth is a value it is because it is true and not because it is brave to speak it.
W. Somerset Maugham
You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.
W. Somerset Maugham
Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.
W. Somerset Maugham
Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.
W. Somerset Maugham
A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.
W. Somerset Maugham
When we come to judge others it is not by ourselves as we really are that we judge them, but by an image that we have formed of ourselves from which we have left out everything that offends our vanity or would discredit us in the eyes of the world.
W. Somerset Maugham
If a man hasn't what's necessary to make a woman love him, it's his fault, not hers.
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You cannot write well or much (and I venture the opinion that you cannot write well unless you write much) unless you form a habit.
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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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The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.
W. Somerset Maugham
It has been said that metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct.
W. Somerset Maugham
The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.
W. Somerset Maugham
The world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willing avoids the sight of distress.
W. Somerset Maugham
Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequence than to have a really affectionate mother.
W. Somerset Maugham
Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.
W. Somerset Maugham
She was a fool and he knew it and because he loved her it had made no difference.
W. Somerset Maugham
