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It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and, for all that, yield a plausible harmony.
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
Person
Plausible
Amazed
Traits
Yield
Harmony
Exist
Character
Persons
Incongruous
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practiced at spare moments it is a whole-time job.
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I know that you're selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven't the nerve of a rabbit, I know you're a liar and a humbug, I know that you're utterly contemptible. And the tragic part is'--her face was on a sudden distraught with pain--'the tragic part is that notwithstanding I love you with all my heart.
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The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.
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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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You know, the Philistines have long since discarded the rack and stake as a means of suppressing the opinions they feared: they've discovered a much more deadly weapon of destruction -- the wisecrack.
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As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.
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Failure make people bitter and cruel. Success improves the character of the man.
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By the time an actor knows how to act any sort of part he is often too old to act any but a few.
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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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I thought it was only in revealed religion that a mistranslation improved the sense.
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There in the mist, enormous, majestic, silent and terrible, stood the Great Wall of China. Solitarily, with the indifference of nature herself, it crept up the mountain side and slipped down to the depth of the valley.
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The great trues are too important to be new.
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Women are often under the impression that men are much more madly in love with them than they really are.
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It's a funny thing about life if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
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You will have to learn many tedious things,...which you will forget the moment you have passed your final examination, but in anatomy it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.
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Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.
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We find things beautiful because we recognize them and contrariwise we find things beautiful because their novelty surprises us.
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But the only important thing in a book is the meaning it has for you it may have other and much more profound meanings for the critic, but at second-hand they can be of small service to you.
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It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.
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As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue.
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