The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.
W. Somerset MaughamRead
Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, depreciating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a common room.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Art should be experienced with intense emotion rather than with superficial coolness.
W. Somerset Maugham emphasizes that true appreciation of art requires passion and intensity. He criticizes a detached and overly refined approach to art, which he sees as inadequate, suggesting that art provokes strong feelings and should be embraced wholeheartedly, even if that means confronting criticism or societal norms.
Themes
ArtPassionAppreciationEmotionCriticism
In practice
Example use cases
During an art critique, I shared Maugham's view on appreciating art with passion to inspire my classmates.
More from W. Somerset Maugham
All quotes βCronshaw stopped for a moment to drink. He had pondered for twenty years the problem whether he loved liquor because it made him talk or whether he loved conversation because it made him thirsty.
W. Somerset MaughamRead
Are you sure you can prevent yourself from falling in love one of these days? Such things do happen, you know, even to the most prudent men.' Simon gave him a strange, one might even have thought a hostile, look. I should tear it out of my heart as I'd wrench out of my mouth a rotten tooth.
W. Somerset MaughamRead
I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
W. Somerset MaughamRead
The world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willing avoids the sight of distress.
W. Somerset MaughamRead
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 MaughamRead
Similar quotes
But I always need to identify with a character to write about him or her - and by 'identify,' I mean see the world through that person's eyes and have a strong sense of the inner logic of their acts and decisions, wacky or wrongheaded though they might be. In that sense, I think there's some of me in all of them.
Jennifer EganRead
There is no sound more feminine than a woman in a taffeta dress.
Oscar De La RentaRead
Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing.
Marc ChagallRead
My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder. My art is grounded in reflections over being different from others. My sufferings are part of my self and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art. I want to keep those sufferings
Edvard MunchRead
Fashion is a language that creates itself in clothes to interpret reality.
Karl LagerfeldRead
I can come up with 30 T-shirt designs in a day, but it's just about where to slot each of them. That's streetwear to me. It's about knowing where to buy things, not this mass thing you can get anywhere.
Virgil AblohRead