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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMWhat do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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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 -
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?
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity.
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Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they?
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
I´m not going to bring a child into the world, and love her, and bring her up, just so that some man may want to sleep with her so much that he’s willing to provide her with board and lodging for the rest of her life.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one.
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Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain.
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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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.
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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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If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.
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I want a girl because I want to bring her up so that she shan’t make the mistakes I’ve made.
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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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A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there’s only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.
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There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity.
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You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.
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Unfortunately sometimes one can’t do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.
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To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.
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The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don’t.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM