To 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.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAMBut 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.
More W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
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When you’re eighteen your emotions are violent, but they’re not durable.
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You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct.
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Unfortunately sometimes one can’t do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.
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We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.
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I wish I could make you see how exciting the life of the spirit is and how rich in experience. It’s illimitable. It’s such a happy life. There’s only one thing like it, when you’re up in a plane by yourself, high, high, and only infinity surrounds you.
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When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch’s statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
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Now the answer … is plain, but it is so unpalatable that most men will not face it. There is no reason for life and life has no meaning.
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It is a nuisance that knowledge can only be acquired by hard work.
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One cannot find peace in work or in pleasure, in the world or in a convent, but only in one’s soul.
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I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.
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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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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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What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?
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An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
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I´m not going to bring a child into the world, and love her, and bring her up, just so that some man may want to sleep with her so much that he’s willing to provide her with board and lodging for the rest of her life.
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The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither.
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Now it is a funny thing about life. If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. If you utterly decline to make do with what you can get, then somehow or other, you are very likely to get what you want.
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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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They have no manners and are woefully unable to deal with any social predicament. Their idea of a celebration is to go to a public house and drink six beers. They are mean, malicious and envious . They are scum.
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The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
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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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All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it’s just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.
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A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life.
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You waste a lot of time going down blind alleys if you have no one to lead you.
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We must be very humble. We must see the beauty of quietness. We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us. And let us seek the love of simple, ignorant people. Their ignorance is better than all our knowledge.
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Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM