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
The artist produces for the liberation of his soul.
Interpretation
Artists create to express themselves and free their inner thoughts and emotions.
This quote suggests that the act of creating art is fundamentally tied to the artist's personal freedom and expression. It implies that through the process of creation, artists liberate their innermost thoughts and feelings, allowing their true selves to emerge and connect with the world around them.
In practice
In an art class, to inspire students about the importance of creativity.
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.
Cronshaw 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.
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.
I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
The world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willing avoids the sight of distress.
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.
It is not just shameful for a contemporary American poet to use rhymes, it is unthinkable. It seems banal to him; he fears banality worse than anything, and therefore, he uses free verse - though free verse is no guarantee against banality.
I would wish my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them.
What makes us feel drawn to music is that our whole being is music: our mind and body, the nature in which we live, the nature which has made us, all that is beneath and around us, it is all music.
My mother is a great artist, but she always treated her paintings like minor postcards. Had she pursued it, she would have been a great artist. Instead, she looked down on her art.
It's a maddening thing in itself to look at an old poem of yours. To translate it is even more maddening.
My greatest joy comes from creativity: from feeling that I have been able to identify a certain aspect of human nature and crystallise a phenomenon in words.
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