QuoteProject
He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.
W. Somerset Maugham
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

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.

Themes

MoneyContemptImportanceLifeStruggle

In practice

Example use cases

Use this quote in a discussion about the value of money in achieving goals.

More from W. Somerset Maugham

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
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.
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

Antitrust is the way that the government promotes markets when there are market failures. It has nothing to do with the idea of free information.
Bill GatesRead
Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible.
Joseph AddisonRead
Great occasions rouse even the lowest of human beings to some kind of greatness, but he alone is the really great man whose character is great always, the same wherever he be.
Swami VivekanandaRead
At the end, we're kind of observers - creative people, I mean. I feel like an observer, and I'm pretty much able to step out of things and see how things are playing out.
Nick CaveRead
Why do I live in the desert? Because the desert is the *locus Dei*.
Edward AbbeyRead
Nuclear weapons and TV have simply intensified the consequences of our tendencies, upped the stakes.
David Foster WallaceRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.