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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
Cute
Controlled
Chance
Life
Improvisation
Largely
Conduct
Perpetual
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?
W. Somerset Maugham
Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
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From old habit, unconsciously he thanked God that he no longer believed in Him.
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There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
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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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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.
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As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.
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It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
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For the complete life, the perfect pattern includes old age as well as youth and maturity.
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The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.
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Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequence than to have a really affectionate mother.
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I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
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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!
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No married man's ever made up his mind until he's heard what his wife has got to say about it.
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Well, you know when people are no good at anything else they become writers.
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It has been said that metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct.
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Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
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I wonder how anyone can have the face to condemn others when he reflects upon his own thoughts.
W. Somerset Maugham
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.
W. Somerset Maugham
A man filled with meat turns his back on the dry bones of political doctrine. Fanatical devotion to the ruling party comes more readily from the materially deprived At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
W. Somerset Maugham
