W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
36 W. Somerset Maugham quotes:
"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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"Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young."
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"Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul."
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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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"The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous, on the contrary, it makes them for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind. Failure makes people bitter and cruel."
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"Only a mediocre person is always at his best."
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"It's a funny thing about life: if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it."
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"There are two good things in life -- freedom of thought and freedom of action."
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"Perfection is what American women expect to find in their husbands... but English women only hope to find in their butlers."
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"It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who has lost it."
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"People who ask for your criticism want only praise."
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"You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism."
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"American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers."
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"Perfection has one grave defect. It is apt to be dull."
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"Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species."
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"What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature."
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