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Art for art's sake makes no more sense than gin for gin's sake.
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
Advertising
Sake
Sense
Makes
Art
Gin
More quotes by 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
It was such a beautiful day I decided to stay in bed.
W. Somerset Maugham
We do not write because we want to we write because we have to.
W. Somerset Maugham
The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.
W. Somerset Maugham
Art, unless it leads to right action, is no more than the opium of an intelligentsia.
W. Somerset Maugham
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.
W. Somerset Maugham
If a man hasn't what's necessary to make a woman love him, it's his fault, not hers.
W. Somerset Maugham
It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic. - Of Human Bondage
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
Never pause unless you have a reason for it, but when you pause, pause as long as you can.
W. Somerset Maugham
The author always loads his dice, but he must never let the reader see that he has done so, and by the manipulation of his plot, he can engage the reader's attention so that he does not perceive the violence that has been done to him.
W. Somerset Maugham
Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, depreciating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a common room.
W. Somerset Maugham
You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.
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
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
Beauty is an ecstasy it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.
W. Somerset Maugham
I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
W. Somerset Maugham
Do you absolutely despise me, Walter? No. He hesitated and his voice was strange. I despise myself.
W. Somerset Maugham
If only the good were a little less heavy-footed
W. Somerset Maugham
The tragedy of love is indifference.
W. Somerset Maugham
