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Perhaps it would have been possible to see in him a new Prometheus...the hero who for the good of mankind exposes himself to the agonies of the damned...undaunted by failure, by an unceasing effort of courage holding despair at bay, doggedly persistent in the face of self-doubt, which is the artist's bitterest enemy.

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
Good
Enemy
Holding
Undaunted
Would
Effort
Despair
Agonies
Possible
Hero
Unceasing
Face
Failure
Prometheus
Faces
Courage
Exposes
Artist
Mankind
Damned
Art
Perhaps
Persistent
Doggedly
Self
Doubt
Agony
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You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.
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When you have loved as she has loved, you grow old beautifully.
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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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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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When you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right.
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I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.
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There in the mist, enormous, majestic, silent and terrible, stood the Great Wall of China. Solitarily, with the indifference of nature herself, it crept up the mountain side and slipped down to the depth of the valley.
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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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Cronshaw stopped for a moment to drink. He had pondered for twenty years the problem whether he loved liquor because it made him talk or whether he loved conversation because it made him thirsty.
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It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.
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The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of thought and, indifferent to aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success.
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A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.
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Beauty is also a Gift of God, one of the most rare and precious, and we should be thankful if we are happy enough to possess it and thankful, if we are not, that others possess it for our pleasure.
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Life is really very fantastic, and one has to have a peculiar sense of humour to see the fun of it. [Virtue]
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No egoism is so insufferable as that of the Christian with regard to his soul.
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With the superciliousness of extreme youth, I put thirty-five as the utmost limit at which a man might fall in love without making a fool of himself.
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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.
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Perfect is determined in shortened measures of time, not over long periods of time or lifetimes. It would be unnatural.
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It is clear that men accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure, but only because they expect a greater pleasure in the future. Often the pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation of the rule.
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The ideas for stories that thronged my brain would not let me rest till I had got rid of them by writing them.
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