Quote

People talk of beauty lightly, and having no feeling for words, they use that one carelessly, so that it loses its force and the thing it stands for, sharing its name with a hundred trivial objects, is deprived of dignity. They call beautiful a dress, a dog, a sermon and when they are face to face with Beauty cannot recognise it.

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
People
Faces
Loses
Sharing
Words
Name
Stands
Carelessly
Force
Beauty
Dress
Sermon
Use
Feeling
Dresses
Lightly
Feelings
Names
Dignity
Trivial
Beautiful
Call
Dog
Sermons
Cannot
Talk
Objects
Recognise
Thing
Face
Hundred
Deprived

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But I am not sure it would contain any short stories. For the short story is a minor art, and it must content itself with moving, exciting and amusing the reader. ...I do not think that there is any (short story) that will give the reader that thrill, that rapture, that fruitful energy which great art can produce.
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The crown of literature is poetry.
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The mathematician who after seeing Phedre asked: 'Qu'est que ca prouve?' was not such a fool as he has been generally made out. No one has ever been able to explain why the Doric temple of Paestum is more beautiful than a glass of cold beer except by bringing in considerations that have nothing to do with beauty.
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There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
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Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
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Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experience he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours' relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey.
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She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.
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An art is only great and significant if it is one that all may enjoy. The art of a clique is but a plaything.
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She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.
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My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.
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Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.
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Advice to first year medical students: In anatomy, it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.
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Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.
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In civilized communities men's idiosyncrasies are mitigated by the necessity of conforming to certain rules of behavior. Culture is a mask that hides their faces.
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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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The artist produces for the liberation of his soul.
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It is good to be on your guard against an Englishman who speaks French perfectly he is very likely to be a card-sharper or an attache in the diplomatic service.
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Simplicity and naturalness are the truest marks of distinction.
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When a man's in love, he at once makes a pedestal of the Ten Commandments and stands on the top of them with his arms akimbo. When a woman's in love she doesn't care two straws for Thou Shalt and Thou Shalt Not.
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