The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMTo 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.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psychopathologist the unspeakable.
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Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
It was such a beautiful day I decided to stay in bed.
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How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.
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There’s always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.
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What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one’s faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one’s memories.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Death doesn’t affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn’t concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM -
One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one’s soul.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM