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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMWhen 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.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.
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Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
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I recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none?
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The Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the churches make out.
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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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I don’t think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
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She loved three things – a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man.
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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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They call beautiful a dress, a dog, a sermon; and when they are face to face with Beauty cannot recognise it.
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We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them.
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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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Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it.
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You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they?
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The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account.
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You’re intoxicated by the boundless space.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM