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The mathematician who after seeing Phedre asked: 'Qu'est que ca prouve?' was not such a fool as he has been generally made out. No one has ever been able to explain why the Doric temple of Paestum is more beautiful than a glass of cold beer except by bringing in considerations that have nothing to do with beauty.

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
Seeing
Glasses
Considerations
Beauty
Explain
Mathematician
Funny
Generally
Temple
Beautiful
Except
Temples
Able
Asked
Bringing
Ever
Fool
Consideration
Nothing
Humor
Glass
Made
Cold
Beer

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He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it must cease one day or another. He looked forward to that day with eager longing. Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful existence on his life's blood it absorbed his existence so intensely that he could take pleasure in nothing else.
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Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.
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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.
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The humour of Dostoievsky is the humour of a barloafer who ties a kettle to a dog's tail.
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We didn't think much in the air corps of a fellow who wangled a cushy job out of his C.O. by buttering him up. It was hard for me to believe that God thought much of a man who tried to wangle salvation by fulsome flattery. I should have thought the worship most pleasing to him was to do your best according to your lights.
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Words have weight, sound and appearance it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.
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First, cut out all the wisdom, then cut out all the adjectives.
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If truth is a value it is because it is true and not because it is brave to speak it.
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It is well to remember that grammar is common speech formulated.
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Well, you know when people are no good at anything else they become writers.
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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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Music-hall songs provide the dull with wit, just as proverbs provide them with wisdom.
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She could not admit but that he had remarkable qualities, sometimes she thought that there was even in him a strange and unattractive greatness it was curious then that she could not love him, but loved still a man whose worthlessness was now so clear to her.
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Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, depreciating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a common room.
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The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut.
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Life wouldn’t be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present. When things are at their worst I find something always happens.
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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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The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.
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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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