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From the earliest time the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.
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
Generations
Profited
Young
Rubbed
Time
Earliest
Wiser
Nonsense
Aging
Discovered
Carry
Imposture
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say, 'I don't know.'
W. Somerset Maugham
Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature and the error is ineradicable.
W. Somerset Maugham
It needs a good deal of philosophy not to be mortified by the thought of persons who have voluntarily abandoned everything that for the most of us makes life worth living and are devoid of envy of what they have missed. I have never made up my mind whether they are fools or wise men.
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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
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
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Only mediocre people are at the best all the time.
W. Somerset Maugham
Refecting on the high divorce rate in America as contrasted with England American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers
W. Somerset Maugham
A little smoke lost in the air, that was the life of a man.
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Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.
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The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.
W. Somerset Maugham
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.
W. Somerset Maugham
There was once a professor of law who said to his students. When you are fighting a case, if you have facts on your side hammer them into the jury, and if you have the law on your side hammer it into the judge. But if you have neither the facts nor the law, asked one of his listeners? Then hammer the hell into the table, answered the professor.
W. Somerset Maugham
When things are at their worst, I find something always happens.
W. Somerset Maugham
I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the center of the world.
W. Somerset Maugham
It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.
W. Somerset Maugham
I don't know why it is that the religious never ascribe common sense to God.
W. Somerset Maugham
No married man's ever made up his mind until he's heard what his wife has got to say about it.
W. Somerset Maugham
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
W. Somerset Maugham
Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more telling. To know that a thing actually happened gives it a poignancy, touches a chord, which a piece of acknowledged fiction misses. It is to touch this chord that some authors have done everything they could to give you the impression that they are telling the plain truth.
W. Somerset Maugham
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
W. Somerset Maugham
