Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Reverie is the groundwork of creative imagination it is the privilege of the artist that with him it is not as with other men an escape from reality, but the means by which he accedes to it.
W. Somerset Maugham
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Imagination
Creative
Means
Artist
Groundwork
Reality
Reverie
Mean
Escape
Men
Privilege
Fantasy
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.
W. Somerset Maugham
Advice to first year medical students: In anatomy, it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.
W. Somerset Maugham
The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.
W. Somerset Maugham
He exulted in the possession of himself once more he realized how much of the delight of the world he had lost when he was absorbed in that madness which they called love he had had enough of it he did not want to be in love anymore if love was that.
W. Somerset Maugham
You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to such temptation.' Well, I know I'm not a Christian and I'm beginning to doubt whether I'm a gentleman,' said Philip.
W. Somerset Maugham
She loved three things — a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man.
W. Somerset Maugham
Only mediocre people are at the best all the time.
W. Somerset Maugham
Just as the painter thinks with his brush and paints the novelist thinks with his story.
W. Somerset Maugham
An art is only great and significant if it is one that all may enjoy. The art of a clique is but a plaything.
W. Somerset Maugham
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.
W. Somerset Maugham
There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one's means of livelihood.
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
Women are strange little beasts,' he said to Dr. Coutras. 'You can treat them like dogs, you can beat them till your arm aches, and still they love you.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'Of course, it is one of the most absurd illusions of Christianity that they have souls.
W. Somerset Maugham
A good rule for writers: do not explain overmuch.
W. Somerset Maugham
Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation.
W. Somerset Maugham
You tend to close your eyes to truth, beauty and goodness because they give no scope to your sense of the ridiculous.
W. Somerset Maugham
As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue.
W. Somerset Maugham
It needs a good deal of philosophy not to be mortified by the thought of persons who have voluntarily abandoned everything that for the most of us makes life worth living and are devoid of envy of what they have missed. I have never made up my mind whether they are fools or wise men.
W. Somerset Maugham
He found that it was easy to make a heroic gesture, but hard to abide by its results.
W. Somerset Maugham
It was like making a blunder at a party there was nothing to do about it, it was dreadfully mortifying, but it showed a lack of sense to ascribe too much importance to it.
W. Somerset Maugham
