W. Somerset Maugham Quote
Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading:When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows.(Philip always pretended that he was not lame.)She restored his belief in himself and put healing ointments, as it were, on all the bruises of his soul.‘Why d’you read then?’ ‘Partly for pleasure, because it’s a habit and I’m just as uncomfortable if I don’t read as if I don’t smoke, and partly to know myself. When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for ME, and it becomes part of me; I’ve got out of the book all that’s any use to me, and I can’t get anything more if I read it a dozen times. You see, it seems to me, one’s like a closed bud, and most of what one reads and does has no effect at all; but there are certain things that have a peculiar significance for one, and they open a petal; and the petals open one by one; and at last the flower is there.’‘It would have interfered with my work,’ he told Philip. ‘What work?’ asked Philip brutally. ‘My inner life,’ he answered.buffeted by the philistines.the love of poetry was dead in England.(its dead everywhere write poem on that idea)My motto is, leave me aloneHe was thankful not to have to believe in God, for then such a condition of things would be intolerable; one could reconcile oneself to existence only because it was meaningless.Then he saw that the normal was the rarest thing in the world.(the whole world was like a sick-house, and there was no rhyme or reason in it)
Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading:When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows.(Philip always pretended that he was not lame.)She restored his belief in himself and put healing ointments, as it were, on all the bruises of his soul.‘Why d’you read then?’ ‘Partly for pleasure, because it’s a habit and I’m just as uncomfortable if I don’t read as if I don’t smoke, and partly to know myself. When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for ME, and it becomes part of me; I’ve got out of the book all that’s any use to me, and I can’t get anything more if I read it a dozen times. You see, it seems to me, one’s like a closed bud, and most of what one reads and does has no effect at all; but there are certain things that have a peculiar significance for one, and they open a petal; and the petals open one by one; and at last the flower is there.’‘It would have interfered with my work,’ he told Philip. ‘What work?’ asked Philip brutally. ‘My inner life,’ he answered.buffeted by the philistines.the love of poetry was dead in England.(its dead everywhere write poem on that idea)My motto is, leave me aloneHe was thankful not to have to believe in God, for then such a condition of things would be intolerable; one could reconcile oneself to existence only because it was meaningless.Then he saw that the normal was the rarest thing in the world.(the whole world was like a sick-house, and there was no rhyme or reason in it)
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About W. Somerset Maugham
Maugham's novels after Liza of Lambeth include Of Human Bondage (1915), The Moon and Sixpence (1919), The Painted Veil (1925), Cakes and Ale (1930) and The Razor's Edge (1944). His short stories were published in collections such as The Casuarina Tree (1926) and The Mixture as Before (1940); many of them have been adapted for radio, cinema and television. His great popularity and prodigious sales provoked adverse reactions from highbrow critics, many of whom sought to belittle him as merely competent. More recent assessments generally rank Of Human Bondage – a book with a large autobiographical element – as a masterpiece, and his short stories are widely held in high critical regard. Maugham's plain prose style became known for its lucidity, but his reliance on clichés attracted adverse critical comment.
During the First World War Maugham worked for the British Secret Service, later drawing on his experiences for stories published in the 1920s. Although primarily homosexual, he attempted to conform to some extent with the norms of his day. After a three-year affair with Syrie Wellcome which produced their daughter, Liza, they married in 1917. The marriage lasted for twelve years, but before, during and after it, Maugham's principal partner was a younger man, Gerald Haxton. Together they made extended visits to Asia, the South Seas and other destinations; Maugham gathered material for his fiction wherever they went. They lived together in the French Riviera, where Maugham entertained lavishly. After Haxton's death in 1944, Alan Searle became Maugham's secretary-companion for the rest of the author's life. Maugham gave up writing novels shortly after the Second World War, and his last years were marred by senility. He died at the age of 91.