I personally prefer freedom of thought. But in England you get neither: you’re ground down by convention. You can’t think as you like and you can’t act as you like. That’s because it’s a democratic nation. I expect America’s worse.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMif you’d ever had a grown-up daughter you’d know that by comparison a bucking steer is easy to manage. And as to knowing what goes on inside her – well, it’s much better to pretend you’re the simple, innocent old fool she almost certainly takes you for.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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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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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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If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
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We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
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It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.
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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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An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
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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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I don’t think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
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Tolerance is only another name for indifference.
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If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one.
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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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Failure make people bitter and cruel. Success improves the character of the man.
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There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.
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The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM