Two little drops in that river that flowed silently towards the unknown; two little drops that to themselves had so much individuality and to the onlooker were but an undistinguishable part of the water.
W. Somerset Maugham...peace of mind: Thou shalt have it only, the answer seemed to come to me, when thou has ceased to desire it.
W. Somerset MaughamThere was neither good nor bad there. There were just facts. It was life.
W. Somerset MaughamShe alone had been blind to his merit. Why? Because he loved her and she did not love him. What was it in the human heart that made you despise a man because he loved you?
W. Somerset MaughamStichwörter: love unrequited-love
The disadvantages and dangers of the author’s calling are offset by an advantage so great as to make all its difficulties, disappointments, and maybe hardships, unimportant...Nothing befalls him that he cannot transmute into a stanza, a song, or a story, and having done this, be rid of it. The artist is the only free man.
W. Somerset MaughamStichwörter: writing transmuting-life-into-art
And if I am not mistaken here is the secret of the greatness that was Spain. In Spain it is men that are the poems, the pictures and the buildings. Men are its philosophies. They lived, these Spaniards of the Golden Age; they felt and did; they did not think. Life was what they sought and found, life in its turmoil, its fervour and its variety. Passion was the seed that brought them forth and passion was the flower they bore. But passion alone cannot give rise to a great art. In the arts the Spaniards invented nothing. They did little in any of those they practised, but give a local colour to a virtuosity they borrowed from abroad. Their literature, as I have ventured to remark, was not of the highest rank; they were taught to paint by foreign masters, but, inapt pupils, gave birth to one painter only of the very first class; they owed their architecture to the Moors, the French and the Italians, and the works themselves produced were best when they departed least from their patterns. Their preeminence was great, but it lay in another direction: it was a preeminence of character. In this I think they have been surpassed by none and equalled only by the ancient Romans. It looks as though all the energy, all the originality, of this vigorous race had been disposed to one end and one end only, the creation of man. It is not in art that they excelled, they excelled in what is greater than art--in man. But it is thought that has the last word.
W. Somerset MaughamStichwörter: art literature thought character spaniards ancient-romans creation-of-man the-golden-age the-last-word
How the gods must have chuckled when they added Hope to the evils with which they filled Pandora's box, for they knew very well that this was the cruellest evil of them all, since it is Hope that lures mankind to endure its misery to the end.
W. Somerset MaughamPensei para mim que os homens são mais interessantes do que os livros, mas têm o defeito de não podermos saltar certos capítulos. Temos, no mínimo, de folhear o livro inteiro para encontrar uma página que valha a pena. E não podemos colocá-los numa estante e pegar neles quando nos apetece; é preciso lê-los quando a oportunidade se apresenta, à semelhança de um livro de uma biblioteca itinerante que é muito procurado, e temos de esperar a nossa vez para o ler e, quando o recebemos, não podemos ficar com ele mais de vinte e quatro horas. Podemos nem ter vontade de o ler naquele momento ou pode acontecer que, com a pressa, nos passe despercebida a única coisa que tinha para nos oferecer.
W. Somerset MaughamThe ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit
W. Somerset Maughamمن نكد الحظ أن يكون للمرء قلب
W. Somerset MaughamStichwörter: the-painted-veil
« erste vorherige
Seite 50 von 52.
nächste letzte »
Data privacy
Imprint
Contact
Diese Website verwendet Cookies, um Ihnen die bestmögliche Funktionalität bieten zu können.