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I don't know why it is that the religious never ascribe common sense to God.
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
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Common
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More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
If only the good were a little less heavy-footed
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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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Well, you know when people are no good at anything else they become writers.
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I prefer a loose woman to a selfish one and a wanton to a fool.
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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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You cannot write well or much (and I venture the opinion that you cannot write well unless you write much) unless you form a habit.
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She says it's really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.
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The audience is a very curious animal. It is shrewd rather than intelligent. Its mental capacity is less than that of its most intellectual members.
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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.
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The worst of having so much tact was that you never quite knew whether other people were acting naturally or being tactful too. [The human element]
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There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
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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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There is only one thing about which I am certain, and this is that there is very little about which one can be certain
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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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Love is what happens to men and women who don't know each other.
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There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity. I recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none?
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Art is triumphant when it can use convention as an instrument of its own purpose.
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You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
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The first duty of a woman is to be pretty, the second is to be well-groomed, and the third is never to contradict.
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A good story is obviously a difficult thing to invent, but its difficulty is a poor reason for despising it.
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