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
For the complete life, the perfect pattern includes old age as well as youth and maturity.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Life incorporates all stages, including youth, maturity, and old age, forming a complete pattern.
W. Somerset Maugham's quote emphasizes the importance of recognizing and accepting the entirety of life, which encompasses not just the exuberance of youth but also the wisdom that comes with maturity and the reflection found in old age. It's a reminder that each phase contributes to the fullness of our experiences and personal growth, urging us to value every stage we encounter.
Themes
LifeAgeYouthMaturityWisdomExperience
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech on aging, one might quote Maugham to illustrate the necessity of embracing all life stages.
More from W. Somerset Maugham
All quotes βCronshaw 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.
W. Somerset MaughamRead
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.
W. Somerset MaughamRead
I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.
W. Somerset MaughamRead
The world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willing avoids the sight of distress.
W. Somerset MaughamRead
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.
W. Somerset MaughamRead
Similar quotes
Going down (descending), I realized, was like taking hold of the loose strand of yard on a sweater you'd just spent hours knitting and pulling it until the entire sweater unraveled into a pile of string. Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again. As if everything gained was inevitably lost.
Cheryl StrayedRead
Adventures are all very well in their place, but there's a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain.
Neil GaimanRead
I took my coffee into the dining room and settled down with the morning paper. A woman in New York had had twins in a taxi. A woman in Ohio had just had her seventeenth child. A twelve-year-old girl in Mexico had given birth to a thirteen-pound boy. The lead article on the woman's page was about how to adjust the older child to the new baby. I finally found an account of an axe murder on page seventeen, and held my coffee cup up to my face to see if the steam might revive me.
Shirley JacksonRead
Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.
Jonathan Safran FoerRead
But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.
Alfred Lord TennysonRead
I focus on very few things in life - my work, my family, my friends. Those things are important to me and I pay good attention to them, and everything else just comes and goes.
Masai UjiriRead