Tag: somerset maugham

W. Somerset Maugham: “Things That You Can’t Come to Know by Hearsay”

Photographer Unknown, (Headphones and the Man)

For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they are born, the city apartment or farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. It is all these things that have made them what they are, and these are the things that you can’t come to know by hearsay…

—W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge

Ziye Liu

Ziye Liu, “Ai Weiwei Artwork in Movement”, Computer Graphics, Animation Gif

“I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.”

― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

W. Somerset Maugham: “The Perfect Work of Art”

Photographer Unknown, (The Leather Sofa)

“I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.”

― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil