The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes. W. Somerset Maugham More Quotes by W. Somerset Maugham More Quotes From W. Somerset Maugham Success. I don't believe it has any effect on me. For one thing I always expected it. W. Somerset Maugham expected work believe The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore. W. Somerset Maugham unjust rain It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it. W. Somerset Maugham milk cry use There are few things so pleasant as a picnic eaten in perfect comfort. W. Somerset Maugham picnics comfort perfect No one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity; the clichés that make you laugh, the hackneyed characters, the well-worn situations, the commonplace story that excites your derision, seem neither hackneyed, well worn nor commonplace to him. ... The conclusion is obvious: you cannot write anything that will convince unless you are yourself convinced. The best seller sells because he writes with his heart's blood. W. Somerset Maugham heart writing character It takes two to make a love affair and a mans meat is too often a woman's poison. W. Somerset Maugham meat love two 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 cynical criticism doe No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind. W. Somerset Maugham commonplace mind No action is in itself good or bad, but only such according to convention. W. Somerset Maugham conventions action A man who is a politician at forty is a statesman at three score and ten. It is at this age, when he would be too old to be a clerk or a gardener or a police-court magistrate, that he is ripe to govern a country. W. Somerset Maugham police men country 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 copernicus bears men Vaguely, as when you are studying a foreign language and read a page which at first you can make nothing of, till a word or a sentence gives you a clue; and on a sudden suspicion, as it were, of the sense flashes across your troubled wits, vaguely she gained an inkling into the workings of Walter's mind. It was like a dark and ominous landscape seen by a flash of lightning and in a moment hidden again by the night. She shuddered at what she saw. W. Somerset Maugham dark giving night 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 art moving thinking They say a woman always remembers her first lover with affection; but perhaps she does not always remember him. W. Somerset Maugham lovers doe firsts The humour of Dostoievsky is the humour of a barloafer who ties a kettle to a dog's tail. W. Somerset Maugham ties dog tails You know, when one's in love,' I said, 'and things go all wrong, one's terribly unhappy and one thinks one won't ever get over it. But you'll be astounded to learn what the sea will do.' What do you mean?' she smiled. Well, love isn't a good sailor and it languishes on a sea voyage. You'll be surprised when you have the Atlantic between you and Larry to find how slight the pang is that before you sailed seemed intolerable. W. Somerset Maugham sea mean thinking I can only guess that it made the world he went back to...strangely without meaning. Though he lived in it, though he even enjoyed it, it remained utterly remote. I think it had lost sense for him. In his heart was the reflection of a lovely dream that he could never quite recall. W. Somerset Maugham change dream memories I'm afraid you've thought me a bigger fool than I am. W. Somerset Maugham fool bigger I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing on somebody's else advice. W. Somerset Maugham bats mistake advice I knew that suffering did not enoble; it degraded. It made men selfish, petty and suspicious. It absorbed them in small things...it made them less than men; and I wrote ferociously that we learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others. W. Somerset Maugham suffering-of-others selfish men
