Tolerance is only another name for indifference.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMMen seek but one thing in life — their pleasure.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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Impropriety is the soul of wit.
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People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
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The most valuable thing I have learned from life is to regret nothing.
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We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them.
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In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally.
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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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If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.
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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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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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You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they?
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What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.
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If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.
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As the cosmos are in place, so be it with your life.
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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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Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
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Of all the hokum with which this country [America] is riddled, the most odd is the common notion that it is free of class distinctions.
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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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Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.
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The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
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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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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.
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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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Failure make people bitter and cruel. Success improves the character of the man.
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You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action.
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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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Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM