The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMYou demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they?
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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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’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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My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.
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Life isn’t long enough for love and art.
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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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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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The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.
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As the cosmos are in place, so be it with your life.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
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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You’re intoxicated by the boundless space.
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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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the churches make out.
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I wish I could make you see how much fuller the life I offer you is than anything you have a conception of.
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The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psychopathologist the unspeakable.
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Throw yourself into the hurly-burly of life. It doesn’t matter how many mistakes you make, what unhappiness you have to undergo. It is all your material …
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM