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Art is triumphant when it can use convention as an instrument of its own purpose.
W. Somerset Maugham
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W. Somerset Maugham
Age: 90 †
Born: 1874
Born: January 1
Died: 1965
Died: January 1
Army Scout
Literary Critic
Novelist
Physician Writer
Playwright
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Paris
France
W. Somerset Maugham
Somerset Maugham
Use
Art
Triumphant
Convention
Conventions
Instrument
Instruments
Purpose
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
I can only guess that it made the world he went back to...strangely without meaning. Though he lived in it, though he even enjoyed it, it remained utterly remote. I think it had lost sense for him. In his heart was the reflection of a lovely dream that he could never quite recall.
W. Somerset Maugham
The great critic … must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.
W. Somerset Maugham
First, cut out all the wisdom, then cut out all the adjectives.
W. Somerset Maugham
I have always been convinced that if a woman once made up her mind to marry a man, nothing but instant flight could save him.
W. Somerset Maugham
Cronshaw stopped for a moment to drink. He had pondered for twenty years the problem whether he loved liquor because it made him talk or whether he loved conversation because it made him thirsty.
W. Somerset Maugham
Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more telling. To know that a thing actually happened gives it a poignancy, touches a chord, which a piece of acknowledged fiction misses. It is to touch this chord that some authors have done everything they could to give you the impression that they are telling the plain truth.
W. Somerset Maugham
The value of money is that with it we can tell any man to go to the devil. It is the sixth sense which enables you to enjoy the other five.
W. Somerset Maugham
The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.
W. Somerset Maugham
She loved three things — a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man.
W. Somerset Maugham
There is nothing so terrible as the pursuit of art by those who have no talent.
W. Somerset Maugham
You cannot write well or much (and I venture the opinion that you cannot write well unless you write much) unless you form a habit.
W. Somerset Maugham
The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.
W. Somerset Maugham
Because women can do nothing except love, they've given it a ridiculous importance. They want to persuade us that it's the whole of life. It's an insignificant part.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled in them, and each time they come into contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.
W. Somerset Maugham
Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives not by truth but by make-believe.
W. Somerset Maugham
As the cosmos are in place, so be it with your life.
W. Somerset Maugham
I now, weak, old, diseased, poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing.
W. Somerset Maugham
Impropriety is the soul of wit.
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
She [Sadie Thompson] gathered herself together. No one could describe the scorn of her expression or the contemptuous hatred she put into her answer. You men! You filthy dirty pigs! You're all the same, all of you. Pigs! Pigs!
W. Somerset Maugham
