You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live in is to recognize the inevitable selfishness of humanity.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMWhat does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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Failure make people bitter and cruel. Success improves the character of the man.
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It is a nuisance that knowledge can only be acquired by hard work.
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One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one’s soul.
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The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
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If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one.
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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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Any society that values wealth above freedom will lose its freedom, and will ultimately lose its wealth as well
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The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psychopathologist the unspeakable.
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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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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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If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.
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Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
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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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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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Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM