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But what is criticism? Criticism is purely destructive anyone can destroy, but not everyone can build up.
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
Purely
Destructive
Destroy
Criticism
Build
Anyone
Everyone
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
I do not think you want too much sincerity in society. It would be like an iron girder in a house of cards.
W. Somerset Maugham
We have long passed the Victorian Era when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.
W. Somerset Maugham
There in the mist, enormous, majestic, silent and terrible, stood the Great Wall of China. Solitarily, with the indifference of nature herself, it crept up the mountain side and slipped down to the depth of the valley.
W. Somerset Maugham
I know that you're selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven't the nerve of a rabbit, I know you're a liar and a humbug, I know that you're utterly contemptible. And the tragic part is'--her face was on a sudden distraught with pain--'the tragic part is that notwithstanding I love you with all my heart.
W. Somerset Maugham
What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.
W. Somerset Maugham
There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one's means of livelihood.
W. Somerset Maugham
Because women can do nothing except love, they've given it a ridiculous importance. They want to persuade us that it's the whole of life. It's an insignificant part.
W. Somerset Maugham
Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.
W. Somerset Maugham
We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house.
W. Somerset Maugham
The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.
W. Somerset Maugham
There is no object to life. To nature nothing matters but the continuation of the species.
W. Somerset Maugham
I don't know why it is that the religious never ascribe common sense to God.
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
From old habit, unconsciously he thanked God that he no longer believed in Him.
W. Somerset Maugham
It's always difficult to make conversation with a drunk, and there's no denying it, the sober are at a disadvantage with him.
W. Somerset Maugham
The essential element of love is a belief in its own eternity.
W. Somerset Maugham
The trouble is that thinking looks like loafing. Who wants to pay people for daydreaming?
W. Somerset Maugham
Life isn't long enough for love and art.
W. Somerset Maugham
There are men whose sense of humour is so ill developed that they still bear a grudge against Copernicus because he dethroned them from the central position in the universe. They feel it a personal affront that they can no longer consider themselves the pivot upon which turns the whole of created things.
W. Somerset Maugham
Thank God, I can look at a sunset now without having to think how to describe it
W. Somerset Maugham
