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Common-sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncrasies of individual character and the opinion of the newspapers.
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
Character
Childhood
Made
Name
Unthinking
Opinion
Thoughtlessness
Names
Idiosyncrasies
Common
Prejudices
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Sense
Newspapers
Another
Prejudice
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
When married people don't get on they can separate, but if they're not married it's impossible. It's a tie that only death can sever.
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It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.
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She had no mercy. He looked at her neck and thought how he would like to jab it with the knife he had for his muffin. He knew enough anatomy to make pretty certain of getting the carotid artery. And at the same time he wanted to cover her pale, thin face with kisses.
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You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.
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If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.
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if you'd ever had a grown-up daughter you'd know that by comparison a bucking steer is easy to manage. And as to knowing what goes on inside her - well, it's much better to pretend you're the simple, innocent old fool she almost certainly takes you for.
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We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young judge us.
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Art, unless it leads to right action, is no more than the opium of an intelligentsia.
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Remember that it is nothing to do your duty, that is demanded of you and is no more meritorious than to wash your hands when they are dirty the only thing that counts is the love of duty when love and duty are one, then grace is in you and you will enjoy a happiness which passes all understanding.
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All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it's just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.
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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?
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You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humour teaches tolerance, and the humorist, with a smile and perhaps a sigh, is more likely to shrug his shoulders than to condemn.
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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.
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Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical.
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Thank God, I can look at a sunset now without having to think how to describe it
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It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic. - Of Human Bondage
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[Money] is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets.
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I don't know why it is that the religious never ascribe common sense to God.
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Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature and the error is ineradicable.
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I'm not only my spirit buy my body, and who can decide how much I, my individual self, am conditioned by the accident of my body? Would Byron have been Byron but for his club foot, or Dostoyevsky Dostoyevsky without his epilepsy?
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