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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.
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
Powerful
Strokes
White
Breast
Made
Sarcastic
Plunged
Way
Breasts
Platitudes
Confident
Swimmer
Towards
Stroke
Obvious
Cliffs
Sea
Channel
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of thought and, indifferent to aught else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success.
W. Somerset Maugham
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
W. Somerset Maugham
Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.
W. Somerset Maugham
Reserve is an artificial quality that is developed in most of us but as the result of innumerable rebuffs.
W. Somerset Maugham
Art for art's sake makes no more sense than gin for gin's sake.
W. Somerset Maugham
Man's desire for the approval of his fellows is so strong, his dread of their censure so violent, that he himself has brought his enemy (conscience) within his gates and it keeps watch over him, vigilant always in the interests of its master to crush any half-formed desire to break away from the herd.
W. Somerset Maugham
Genius is talent provided with ideals. Genius starves while talent wears purple and fine linen. The man of genius of today will infifty years' time be in most cases no more than a man of talent.
W. Somerset Maugham
Only mediocre people are at the best all the time.
W. Somerset Maugham
You must not pursue a success, but fly from it.
W. Somerset Maugham
I like manual labor. Whenever I've got waterlogged with study, I've taken a spell of it and found it spiritually invigorating.
W. Somerset Maugham
You learn more quickly under the guidance of experienced teachers. You waste a lot of time going down blind alleys if you have no one to lead you.
W. Somerset Maugham
Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure.
W. Somerset Maugham
Life is really very fantastic, and one has to have a peculiar sense of humour to see the fun of it. [Virtue]
W. Somerset Maugham
Art is a manifestation of emotion, and emotion speaks a language that all may understand.
W. Somerset Maugham
Yet magic is no more than the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Will, love and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses and whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician. Magic has but one dogma, namely, that the seen is the measure of the unseen.
W. Somerset Maugham
The ideas for stories that thronged my brain would not let me rest till I had got rid of them by writing them.
W. Somerset Maugham
Music-hall songs provide the dull with wit, just as proverbs provide them with wisdom.
W. Somerset Maugham
As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.
W. Somerset Maugham
There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is not true that suffering ennobles the character happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
W. Somerset Maugham