What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMImagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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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 secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.
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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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It was such a beautiful day I decided to stay in bed.
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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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Men seek but one thing in life — their pleasure.
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Death doesn’t affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn’t concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.
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People talk of beauty lightly, and having no feeling for words, they use that one carelessly, so that it loses its force; and the thing it stands for, sharing its name with a hundred trivial objects, is deprived of dignity.
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Life isn’t long enough for love and art.
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The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
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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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You learn more quickly under the guidance of experienced teachers.
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The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psychopathologist the unspeakable.
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You’re intoxicated by the boundless space.
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The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.
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Tolerance is only another name for indifference.
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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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How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.
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You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
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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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For my part I cannot believe in a God who is angry with me because I do not believe in him. I cannot believe in a God who is less tolerant than I. I cannot believe in a God who has neither humour nor common sense.
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It is bad enough to know the past; it would be intolerable to know the future.
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One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one’s life with her.
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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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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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We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM