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It must be that to govern a nation you need a specific talent and that this may very well exist without general ability.
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
Without
Exist
Well
Nation
Need
Talent
Must
Nations
Needs
Ability
Government
Govern
May
Specific
Wells
General
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
You can never know enough about your characters
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There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed.
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The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
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The spirit is often most free when the body is satiated with pleasure indeed, sometimes the stars shine more brightly seen from the gutter than from the hilltop.
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It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.
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So long as some are strong and some are weak, the weak will be driven to the wall.
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Advice to first year medical students: In anatomy, it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.
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The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.
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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.
W. Somerset Maugham
Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.
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No author can create a character out of nothing. He must have a model to give him a starting point but then his imagination goes to work, he builds him up, adding a trait here, a trait there, which his model did not possess.
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We have long passed the Victorian Era when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.
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I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that that is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues.
W. Somerset Maugham
The last words he said to me when I bade him good-night were: Tell Amy it's no good coming after me. Anyhow, I shall change my hotel, so she wouldn't be able to find me.' My own impression is that she's well rid of you,' I said. My dear fellow, I only hope you'll be able to make her see it. But women are very unintelligent.
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There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
W. Somerset Maugham
Loving-kindness is the better part of goodness. It lends grace to the sterner qualities of which this consists.
W. Somerset Maugham
The trouble is that thinking looks like loafing. Who wants to pay people for daydreaming?
W. Somerset Maugham
The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humour.
W. Somerset Maugham
There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.
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