You waste a lot of time going down blind alleys if you have no one to lead you.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMWhat makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one’s faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one’s memories.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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Oh, it’s always the same,’ she sighed, ‘if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it.
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Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly?
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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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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.
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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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In France you get freedom of action: you can do what you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as you choose. They’re both very good things.
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To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.
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Impropriety is the soul of wit.
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I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead.
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It is bad enough to know the past; it would be intolerable to know the future.
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The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
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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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Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.
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Life isn’t long enough for love and art.
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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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM