Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMAny society that values wealth above freedom will lose its freedom, and will ultimately lose its wealth as well
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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You’re intoxicated by the boundless space.
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If a man hasn’t what’s necessary to make a woman love him, it’s his fault, not hers.
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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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The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.
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I personally prefer freedom of thought. But in England you get neither: you’re ground down by convention. You can’t think as you like and you can’t act as you like. That’s because it’s a democratic nation. I expect America’s worse.
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The Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the churches make out.
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What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?
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If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.
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We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.
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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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I wish I could make you see how exciting the life of the spirit is and how rich in experience. It’s illimitable. It’s such a happy life. There’s only one thing like it, when you’re up in a plane by yourself, high, high, and only infinity surrounds you.
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When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably.
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To bear failure with courage is the best proof of character that anyone can give.
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Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.
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But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature.
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I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to university go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene. It is the white-collar proletariat. They do not go to university to acquire culture but to get a job, and when they have got one, scamp it.
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A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, he told her, to which she retorted that a proverb was the last refuge of the mentally destitute.
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Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
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When you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right.
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There’s always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
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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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I don’t think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
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The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.
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The tragedy of love is not death or separation. How long do you think it would have been before one or other of them ceased to care?
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We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.
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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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM