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Our natural egoism leads us to judge people by their relations to ourselves. We want them to be certain things to us, and for us that is what they are because the rest of them is no good to us, we ignore it.
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
Good
Ignore
Things
Leads
People
Judge
Relation
Judging
Rest
Natural
Egoism
Certain
Relations
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
Only mediocre people are at the best all the time.
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I've met so many people, often the scum of the earth, and found them, you know, quite decent. I am an uncomfortable stranger to moral indignation.
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Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
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It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me.
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I thought it was only in revealed religion that a mistranslation improved the sense.
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She alone had been blind to his merit. Why? Because he loved her and she did not love him. What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?
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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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Beauty is also a Gift of God, one of the most rare and precious, and we should be thankful if we are happy enough to possess it and thankful, if we are not, that others possess it for our pleasure.
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Perfect is determined in shortened measures of time, not over long periods of time or lifetimes. It would be unnatural.
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There is no need for the writer to eat a whole sheep to be able to tell you what mutton tastes like. It is enough if he eats a cutlet. But he should do that.
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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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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 crown of literature is poetry.
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When things are at their worst, I find something always happens.
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Women are constantly trying to commit suicide for love, but generally they take care not to succeed.
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It is clear that men accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure, but only because they expect a greater pleasure in the future. Often the pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation of the rule.
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Has it occurred to you that transmigration is at once an explanation and a justification of the evil of the world? If the evils we suffer are the result of sins committed in our past lives, we can bear them with resignation and hope that if in this one we strive toward virtue out future lives will be less afflicted.
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An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
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The artist produces for the liberation of his soul.
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Beauty is an ecstasy it is as simple as hunger.
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