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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
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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
Must
Mortals
Even
Saint
Avoid
Digression
Sin
Venial
Theater
Strenuously
May
Dramatist
Human
Inclination
Humans
Mortal
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
The great critic … must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.
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Self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion.
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When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
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The artist can within limits make what he likes of his life... It is only the artist, and maybe the criminal, who can make his own.
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The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.
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Sentimentality is the only sentiment that rubs you the wrong way.
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It is bad enough to know the past it would be intolerable to know the future.
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I'm only twenty-five. If I've made a mistake I have time to correct it.
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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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I never met an author who admitted that people did not buy his book because it was dull.
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He exulted in the possession of himself once more he realized how much of the delight of the world he had lost when he was absorbed in that madness which they called love he had had enough of it he did not want to be in love anymore if love was that.
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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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People who ask for your criticism want only praise.
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I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell... their heart's in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.
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In civilized communities men's idiosyncrasies are mitigated by the necessity of conforming to certain rules of behavior. Culture is a mask that hides their faces.
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He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.
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She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.
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Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither.
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I could have forgiven it if he'd fallen desperately in love with someone and gone off with her. I should have thought that natural. I shouldn't really have blamed him. I should have thought he was led away. Men are so weak, and women are so unscrupulous.
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I wonder how anyone can have the face to condemn others when he reflects upon his own thoughts.
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