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The author always loads his dice, but he must never let the reader see that he has done so.
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
Never
Loads
Dice
Load
Author
Reader
Done
Must
Always
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
To write simply is as difficult as to be good.
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Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experience he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours' relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey.
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Art is triumphant when it can use convention as an instrument of its own purpose.
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The good traveler has the gift of surprise.
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She loved three things — a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man.
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Common-sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncrasies of individual character and the opinion of the newspapers.
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No action is in itself good or bad, but only such according to convention.
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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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Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
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There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.
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In the conduct of life we make use of deliberation to justify ourselves in doing what we want to do.
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What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.
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No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind.
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The novel may stimulate you to think. It may satisfy your aesthetic sense. It may arouse your moral emotions. But if it does not entertain you it is a bad novel.
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We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house.
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An art is only great and significant if it is one that all may enjoy. The art of a clique is but a plaything.
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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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[Money] is the string with which a sardonic destiny directs the motions of its puppets.
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Now it is a funny thing about life. If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. If you utterly decline to make do with what you can get, then somehow or other, you are very likely to get what you want.
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Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.
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