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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
Anyone
Everyone
Purely
Destructive
Destroy
Criticism
Build
More quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more telling. To know that a thing actually happened gives it a poignancy, touches a chord, which a piece of acknowledged fiction misses. It is to touch this chord that some authors have done everything they could to give you the impression that they are telling the plain truth.
W. Somerset Maugham
Refecting on the high divorce rate in America as contrasted with England American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers
W. Somerset Maugham
It is unsafe to take your reader for more of a fool than he is.
W. Somerset Maugham
You know, the Philistines have long since discarded the rack and stake as a means of suppressing the opinions they feared: they've discovered a much more deadly weapon of destruction -- the wisecrack.
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
The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
W. Somerset Maugham
I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul's good to do each day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed.
W. Somerset Maugham
Men have ascribed to God imperfections that they would deplore in themselves.
W. Somerset Maugham
A man ought to work. That's what he's here for. That's how he contributes to the welfare of the community.
W. Somerset Maugham
Her tears were partly tears of happiness, for she felt that the strangeness between them was gone. She loved him now with a new love because he had made her suffer.
W. Somerset Maugham
By the time an actor knows how to act any sort of part he is often too old to act any but a few.
W. Somerset Maugham
She had no mercy. He looked at her neck and thought how he would like to jab it with the knife he had for his muffin. He knew enough anatomy to make pretty certain of getting the carotid artery. And at the same time he wanted to cover her pale, thin face with kisses.
W. Somerset Maugham
Charm and nothing but charm at last grows a little tiresome. It's a relief then to deal with a man who isn't quite so delightful but a little more sincere.
W. Somerset Maugham
Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment.
W. Somerset Maugham
Nothing more predisposes someone in our favour than to let him rob you a little.
W. Somerset Maugham
It is clear that men accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure, but only because they expect a greater pleasure in the future. Often the pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation of the rule.
W. Somerset Maugham
Evil can be condoned only if in the beyond it is compensated by good and god himself needs immortality to vindicate his ways to man.
W. Somerset Maugham
The Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the churches make out.
W. Somerset Maugham
The humorist has a good eye for the humbug he does not always recognize the saint.
W. Somerset Maugham
There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action.
W. Somerset Maugham
