The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMYou will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live in is to recognize the inevitable selfishness of humanity.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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Life isn’t long enough for love and art.
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I’d sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.
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Unfortunately sometimes one can’t do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.
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The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquillity of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
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One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one’s soul.
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What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.
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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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She loved three things – a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man.
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An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
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Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
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Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly?
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The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity.
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When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch’s statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
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Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
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The most valuable thing I have learned from life is to regret nothing.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM