If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMAll 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.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.
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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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Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
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The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
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The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity.
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You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.
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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.
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There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
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You waste a lot of time going down blind alleys if you have no one to lead you.
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It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
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Now the answer … is plain, but it is so unpalatable that most men will not face it. There is no reason for life and life has no meaning.
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When a woman loves you she’s not satisfied until she possesses your soul. Because she’s weak, she has a rage for domination, and nothing less will satisfy her.
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It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.
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He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.
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Life wouldn’t be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present. When things are at their worst I find something always happens.
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When you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right.
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We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young judge us.
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Any society that values wealth above freedom will lose its freedom, and will ultimately lose its wealth as well
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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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I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me.
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They have no manners and are woefully unable to deal with any social predicament. Their idea of a celebration is to go to a public house and drink six beers. They are mean, malicious and envious . They are scum.
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If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one.
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Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.
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It was such a beautiful day I decided to stay in bed.
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Men seek but one thing in life — their pleasure.
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A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there’s only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM