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
We find things beautiful because we recognize them and contrariwise we find things beautiful because their novelty surprises us.
Interpretation
Beauty is perceived in familiar things as well as in the surprise of new experiences.
This quote by W. Somerset Maugham suggests that our appreciation of beauty is twofold: we find beauty in things we recognize and understand, which gives us comfort and familiarity, while we also thrill to the beauty of novel experiences that astound and surprise us. Together, these aspects of beauty enrich our lives and shape our perceptions.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of art in our lives.
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.
The Bauhaus strives to bring together all creative effort into one whole, to reunify all the disciplines of practical art - sculpture, painting, handicrafts, and crafts - as inseparable components of a new architecture.
Any actor who judges his character is a fool - for every role you play you've got to absorb that character's motives and justifications.
What is Art? It is the response of man's creative soul to the call of the Real.
There is no such thing as a dumb poet or a handless painter. The essence of an artist is that he should be articulate.
I have no sense of a model or predecessor when I write a memoir: For me, the form exists as a method of processing material that retains too many connections to life to be approached strictly and aesthetically. A memoir is a risk, a one-off, a bastard child.
A classic lecture, rich in sentiment, With scraps of thundrous Epic lilted out By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long, That on the stretched forefinger of all Time Sparkle for ever.
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