"I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing on somebody's else advice."

W. Somerset Maugham Literature See all quotes by W. Somerset Maugham →

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More by W. Somerset Maugham

“After all, a man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing.”

“I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.”

“He was the kind of man with whom one would have hesitated to pass a lonely evening, but with whom one might cheerfully have looked forward to spending six months.”

“Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation.”

“You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humour teaches tolerance, and the humorist, with a smile and perhaps a sigh, is more likely to shrug his shoulders than to condemn.”

“The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.”

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— B. K. S. Iyengar

Literature1918–2014

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"You reap what you sow — not something else, but that. An act of love makes the soul more loving. A deed of humbleness deepens humbleness. The thing reaped is the very thing sown, multiplied a hundred …"

— Frederick William Robertson

Literature1816–1853

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"I told my constituents when I ran for office that the most important vote I would ever take would be on sending their men and women — the boys and girls, the young men and women in my state — or anywh…"

— Rand Paul

Politics1963

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"Ken Noland has put things in the center and I'll use a symmetric pattern, but we use symmetry in a different way. It's non-relational. In the newer American painting we strive to get the thing in the …"

— Frank Stella

Art1936–2024

#justice