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
The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Principles can often be set aside for practical reasons or immediate results.
This quote by W. Somerset Maugham highlights the tension between adhering to principles and adapting to practical circumstances. It suggests that while principles are valuable, they may not always be practical in the face of expedient choices that serve immediate needs or goals, prompting reflection on the balance between integrity and practicality in decision-making.
Themes
PrincipleExpediencySacrificeDecision-MakingPracticality
In practice
Example use cases
In a business meeting discussing ethics versus profit, this quote can illustrate the challenges faced in decision-making.
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
Much work is merely a way to make money; much leisure is merely a way to spend it.
C. Wright MillsRead
We need a certain amount of energy to produce the sound. But then to sustain it, we have to give more energy, or otherwise, it goes and it dies in silence. And therefore, sound is absolutely, inextricably connected to time, the length of time.
Daniel BarenboimRead
Compassion refers to the arising in the heart of the desire to relieve the suffering of all beings.
Ram DassRead
On religion in particular, the time appears to me to have come, when it is a duty of all who, being qualified in point of knowledge, have, on mature consideration, satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false, but hurtful, to make their dissent known.
John Stuart MillRead
Ever since the days of Adam, man has been hiding from God and saying, 'God is hard to find.
Fulton J. SheenRead
Nobody can have the consolations of religion or philosophy unless he has first experienced their desolations.
Aldous HuxleyRead