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
He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.
Interpretation
The quote questions the disdain some people express towards money, highlighting its essential role in life.
In this quote, W. Somerset Maugham reflects on the attitude some individuals have towards money, suggesting that their contempt may stem from a lack of personal experience with financial struggle. Maugham implies that those who criticize money might not fully understand its importance and the challenges that arise from living without it.
In practice
Use this quote in a discussion about the value of money in achieving goals.
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 vicarious responsibility for things we have not done, this taking upon ourselves the consequences for things we are entirely innocent of, is the price we pay for the fact that we live our lives not by ourselves but among our fellow men, and that the faculty of action, which, after all, is the political faculty par excellence, can be actualized only as one of the many and manifold forces of human community.
Much more frequent in Hollywood than the emergence of Cinderella is her sudden vanishing. At our party, even in those glowing days, the clock was always striking twelve for someone at the height of greatness; and there was never a prince to fetch her back to the happy scene.
What is the purpose of life?...To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool!
Hell is having to execute a pointless act from which nothing ever comes except the need to do it again.
The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
Which way you ought to go depends on where you want to get to.
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