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
Genius
Talent
Cases
Starves
Fine
Linen
Today
Wears
Years
Purple
Men
Provided
Time
Ideals
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
When you're eighteen your emotions are violent, but they're not durable.
W. Somerset Maugham
Love is what happens to men and women who don't know each other.
W. Somerset Maugham
It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.
W. Somerset Maugham
Its a toss-up when you decide to leave the beaten track. Many are called, few are chosen.
W. Somerset Maugham
We learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.
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
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
W. Somerset Maugham
The mystic sees the ineffable, and the psychopathologist the unspeakable.
W. Somerset Maugham
A novelist must preserve a childlike belief in the importance of things which common sense considers of no great consequence.
W. Somerset Maugham
There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late. It does not improve the temper.
W. Somerset Maugham
If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?
W. Somerset Maugham
The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.
W. Somerset Maugham
He found that it was easy to make a heroic gesture, but hard to abide by its results.
W. Somerset Maugham
No married man's ever made up his mind until he's heard what his wife has got to say about it.
W. Somerset Maugham
The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.
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
The inclination to digress is human. But the dramatist must avoid it even more strenuously than the saint must avoid sin, for while sin may be venial, digression is mortal.
W. Somerset Maugham
Some American delusions: 1) That there is no class-consciousness in the country. 2) That American coffee is good. 3) That Americans are business-like. 4) That Americans are highly-sexed and that redheads are more highly sexed than others.
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
