If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMBeauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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You 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.
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To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination.
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It is bad enough to know the past; it would be intolerable to know the future.
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If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?
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The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.
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Dullness is the first requisite of a good husband.
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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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All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it’s just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.
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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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From the earliest time the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.
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You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
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The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
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There is nothing so terrible as the pursuit of art by those who have no talent.
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Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
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Failure make people bitter and cruel. Success improves the character of the man.
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I’ll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell… their heart’s in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.
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We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.
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Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.
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It is a nuisance that knowledge can only be acquired by hard work.
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I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
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Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.
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He is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water.
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Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.
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I want a girl because I want to bring her up so that she shan’t make the mistakes I’ve made.
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In France you get freedom of action: you can do what you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as you choose. They’re both very good things.
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We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM