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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.

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
Seems
Laughed
Littles
Belong
Little
Distance
Think
Species
Thinking
Moved
Immeasurable
Seem
Eaten
Dead
Spoken
Strange
Quick

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Life isn't long enough for love and art.
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Beauty is an ecstasy it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.
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Have common sense and stick to the point.
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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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We do not write as we want, but as we can.
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Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
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I don't know why it is that the religious never ascribe common sense to God.
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As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue.
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The day broke grey and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman servant came into a room in which a child was sleeping and drew the curtains. She glanced mechanically at the house opposite, a stucco house with a portico, and went to the child's bed.
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The drama is make-believe. It does not deal with truth but with effect.
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You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humour teaches tolerance, and the humorist, with a smile and perhaps a sigh, is more likely to shrug his shoulders than to condemn.
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It has been said that good prose should resemble the conversation of a well-bred man.
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The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
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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.
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Why did you look at the sunset?' Philip answered with his mouth full: Because I was happy.
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I like manual labor. Whenever I've got waterlogged with study, I've taken a spell of it and found it spiritually invigorating.
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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.
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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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It takes two to make a love affair and a mans meat is too often a woman's poison.
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A writer need not devour a whole sheep in order to know what mutton tastes like, but he must at least eat a chop. Unless he gets his facts right, his imagination will lead him into all kinds of nonsense, and the facts he is most likely to get right are the facts of his own experience.
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