Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
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
Years
Purple
Men
Provided
Time
Ideals
Genius
Talent
Cases
Starves
Fine
Linen
Today
Wears
More quotes by 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
A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.
W. Somerset Maugham
Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.
W. Somerset Maugham
You must not pursue a success, but fly from it.
W. Somerset Maugham
Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.
W. Somerset Maugham
The novel may stimulate you to think. It may satisfy your aesthetic sense. It may arouse your moral emotions. But if it does not entertain you it is a bad novel.
W. Somerset Maugham
Love is what happens to men and women who don't know each other.
W. Somerset Maugham
What mean and cruel things men can do for the love of God.
W. Somerset Maugham
Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.
W. Somerset Maugham
The crown of literature is poetry.
W. Somerset Maugham
He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it must cease one day or another. He looked forward to that day with eager longing. Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful existence on his life's blood it absorbed his existence so intensely that he could take pleasure in nothing else.
W. Somerset Maugham
The most valuable thing I have learned from life is to regret nothing.
W. Somerset Maugham
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.
W. Somerset Maugham
Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature and the error is ineradicable.
W. Somerset Maugham
There's no one as transparent as the person who thinks he's devilish deep.
W. Somerset Maugham
For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is well to remember that grammar is common speech formulated.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it.
W. Somerset Maugham
Art, if it is to be reckoned as one of the great values of life, must teach man humility, tolerance, wisdom and magnanimity. The value of art is not beauty, but right action.
W. Somerset Maugham
We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.
W. Somerset Maugham
