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
All too often, when creative people pick out someone else's creative work as an inspiration, what they end up with is very, very far from the original.
Samuel R. DelanyRead
This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions; these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion.
William ShakespeareRead
For, I must tell you, in this world where today all lose their minds over many & wondrous Machines - some of which, alas, you can see also in this Siege - I construct Aristotelian Machines, that allow anyone to see with Words.
Umberto EcoRead
The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way.
Stephen KingRead
The challenge is to keep up with all the new poets at the same time I love the old ones.
Mary OliverRead
A musical profit outweighs a financial loss.
Duke EllingtonRead