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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.
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
Sides
Depth
Crept
Nature
Enormous
Slipped
Great
China
Majestic
Silent
Mist
Mountain
Valley
Wall
Valleys
Terrible
Indifference
Side
Stood
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.
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It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.
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From old habit, unconsciously he thanked God that he no longer believed in Him.
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The novel may stimulate you to think. It may satisfy your aesthetic sense. It may arouse your moral emotions. But if it does not entertain you it is a bad novel.
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The audience is not the least important actor in the play and if it will not do its allotted share the play falls to pieces.
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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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A man ought to work. That's what he's here for. That's how he contributes to the welfare of the community.
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Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
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The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.
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Marco Polo tells the tale of The Old Man in the Mountains and how he recruits new members to his Band of Assassins by means of drugs, beautiful women, lush gardens, and religious promises. The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
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A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.
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Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art. ~Waddington
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.
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A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life.
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The inclination to digress is human. But the dramatist must avoid it even more strenuously than the saint must avoid sin, for while sin may be venial, digression is mortal.
W. Somerset Maugham
People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
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An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.
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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
Of all the hokum with which this country [America] is riddled, the most odd is the common notion that it is free of class distinctions.
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I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to the universities go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene ... They are scum.
W. Somerset Maugham