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There are directors who desire to be artistic. It is pathetic to compare the seriousness of their aim with the absurdity of their attainment.
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
Pathetic
Absurdity
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Aim
Artistic
Directors
Desire
Attainment
Seriousness
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her.
W. Somerset Maugham
I'm not only my spirit buy my body, and who can decide how much I, my individual self, am conditioned by the accident of my body? Would Byron have been Byron but for his club foot, or Dostoyevsky Dostoyevsky without his epilepsy?
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The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes...
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Remember that it is nothing to do your duty, that is demanded of you and is no more meritorious than to wash your hands when they are dirty the only thing that counts is the love of duty when love and duty are one, then grace is in you and you will enjoy a happiness which passes all understanding.
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Imagination grows by exercise.
W. Somerset Maugham
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. It's a funny thing about life if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
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It was such a beautiful day I decided to stay in bed.
W. Somerset Maugham
A novelist must preserve a childlike belief in the importance of things which common sense considers of no great consequence.
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You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
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Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more telling. To know that a thing actually happened gives it a poignancy, touches a chord, which a piece of acknowledged fiction misses. It is to touch this chord that some authors have done everything they could to give you the impression that they are telling the plain truth.
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You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to such temptation.' Well, I know I'm not a Christian and I'm beginning to doubt whether I'm a gentleman,' said Philip.
W. Somerset Maugham
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.
W. Somerset Maugham
Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it.
W. Somerset Maugham
The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
W. Somerset Maugham
I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.
W. Somerset Maugham
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.
W. Somerset Maugham
Affection is created by habit, community of interests, convenience and the desire of companionship. It is a comfort rather than an exhilaration.
W. Somerset Maugham
We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who makes me laugh.
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Man's desire for the approval of his fellows is so strong, his dread of their censure so violent, that he himself has brought his enemy (conscience) within his gates and it keeps watch over him, vigilant always in the interests of its master to crush any half-formed desire to break away from the herd.
W. Somerset Maugham
