Lewis Woolston > Lewis's Quotes

“You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live in is to recognize the inevitable selfishness of humanity. You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they? When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably. Men seek but one thing in life -- their pleasure.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“I have nothing but contempt for the people who despise money. They are hypocrites or fools. Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five. Without an adequate income half the possibilities of life are shut off. The only thing to be careful about is that you do not pay more than a shilling for the shilling you earn. You will hear people say that poverty is the best spur to the artist. They have never felt the iron of it in their flesh. They do not know how mean it makes you. It exposes you to endless humiliation, it cuts your wings, it eats into your soul like a cancer.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“There was no meaning in life, and man by living served no end. It was immaterial whether he was born or not born, whether he lived or ceased to live. Life was insignificant and death without consequence. Philip exulted, as he had exulted in his boyhood when the weight of a belief in God was lifted from his shoulders: it seemed to him that the last burden of responsibility was taken from him; and for the first time he was utterly free. His insignificance was turned to power, and he felt himself suddenly equal with the cruel fate which had seemed to persecute him; for, if life was meaningless, the world was robbed of its cruelty. What he did or left undone did not matter. Failure was unimportant and success amounted to nothing. He was the most inconsiderate creature in that swarming mass of mankind which for a brief space occupied the surface of the earth; and he was almighty because he had wrenched from chaos the secret of its nothingness. Thoughts came tumbling over one another in Philip's eager fancy, and he took long breaths of joyous satisfaction. He felt inclined to leap and sing. He had not been so happy for months.

'Oh, life,' he cried in his heart, 'Oh life, where is thy sting?”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“I know that I shall die struggling for breath, and I know that I shall be horribly afraid. I know that I shall not be able to keep myself from regretting bitterly the life that has brought me to such a pass; but I disown that regret. I now, weak, old, diseased, poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“Why did you look at the sunset?'
Philip answered with his mouth full:
Because I was happy.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action.”
― Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“There is nothing so terrible as the pursuit of art by those who have no talent.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“They're a funny lot, suicides. I remember one man who couldn't get any work to do and his wife died, so he pawned his clothes and bought a revolver; but he made a mess of it, he only shot out an eye and he got alright. And then, if you please, with an eye gone and a piece of his face blown away, he came to the conclusion that the world wasn't such a bad place after all, and he lived happily ever afterwards. Thing I've always noticed, people don't commit suicide for love, as you'd expect, that's just a fancy of novelists; they commit suicide because they haven't got any money. I wonder why that is."
"I suppose money's more important than love," suggest Philip.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“But Philip was impatient with himself; he called to mind his idea of the pattern of life: the unhappiness he had suffered was no more than part of a decoration which was elaborate and beautiful; he told himself strenuously that he must accept with gaiety everything, dreariness and excitement, pleasure and pain, because it added to the richness of the design.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“Then he saw that the normal was the rarest thing in the world. Everyone had some defect, of body or of mind: he thought of all the people he had known (the whole world was like a sick-house, and there was no rhyme or reason in it), he saw a long procession, deformed in body and warped in mind, some with illness of the flesh, weak hearts or weak lungs, and some with illness of the spirit, languor of will, or a craving for liquor. At this moment he could feel a holy compassion for them all. They were the helpless instruments of blind chance. He could pardon Griffiths for his treachery and Mildred for the pain she had caused him. They could not help themselves. The only reasonable thing was to accept the good of men and be patient with their faults. The words of the dying God crossed his memory:

Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“And then he felt the misery of his life.”
― William Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“Society tempts me to its service by honours and riches and the good opinion of my fellows; but I am indifferent to their good opinion, I despise honours and I can do very well without riches.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.”
― Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham

“His death had been as futile as his life. He died ingloriously, of a stupid disease, failing once more, even at the end, to accomplish anything.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“Philip himself asked desperately what was the use of living at all. It all seemed inane. It was the same with Cronshaw: it was quite unimportant that he had lived; he was dead and forgotten; his life seemed to have served nothing except to give a pushing journalist occasion to write an article in a review. And Philip cried out in his soul:

'What is the use of it?'

The effort was so incommensurate with the result. The bright hopes of youth had to be paid for at such a bitter price of disillusionment. Pain and disease and unhappiness weighed down the scale so heavily. What did it all mean? He thought of his own life, the high hopes with which he had entered upon it, the limitations which his body forced upon him, his friendlessness, and the lack of affection which had surrounded his youth. He did not know that he had ever done anything but what seemed best to do, and what a cropper he had come! Other men, with no more advantages than he, succeeded, and others again, with many more, failed. It seemed pure chance. The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“Why don’t you give up drinking?”

“Because I don’t choose. It doesn’t matter what a man does if he’s ready to take the consequences. Well, I’m ready to take the consequences. You talk glibly of giving up drinking, but it’s the only thing I’ve got left now. What do you think life would be to me without it? Can you understand the happiness I get out of my absinthe? I yearn for it; and when I drink it I savour every drop, and afterwards I feel my soul swimming in ineffable happiness. It disgusts you. You are a puritan and in your heart you despise sensual pleasures. Sensual pleasures are the most violent and the most exquisite. I am a man blessed with vivid senses, and I have indulged them with all my soul. I have to pay the penalty now, and I am ready to pay.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or born, the Forsytes were present; when a Forsyte died — but no Forsyte had as yet died; they did not die; death being contrary to their principles, they took precautions against it, the instinctive precautions of highly vitalized persons who resent encroachments on their property.”
― John Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga

“An epoch which had gilded individual liberty so that if a man had money he was free in law and fact, and if he had not money he was free in law and not in fact. An era which had canonized hypocrisy, so that to seem to be respectable was to be.”
― John Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga

“James and the other eight children of 'Superior Dosset,' of whom there are still five alive, may be said to have represented Victorian England, with its principles of trade and individualism at five per cent, and your money back - if you know what that means. At all events they've turned thirty thousand pounds into a cool million between them in the course of their long lives. (...) Their day is passing, and their type, not altogether for the advantage of the country. They were pedestrian, but they too were sound.”
― John Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga

“We are such inward secret creatures, that inwardness the most amazing thing about us, even more amazing than our reason. But we cannot just walk into the cavern and look around. Most of what we think we know about our minds is pseudo-knowledge. We are all such shocking poseurs, so good at inflating the importance of what we think we value.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea

“One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats, and if some of these can be inexpensive and quickly procured so much the better.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea

“How different each death is, and yet it leads us into the self-same country, that country which we inhabit so rarely, where we see the worthlessness of what we have long pursued and will so soon return to pursuing.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea

“What a queer gamble our existence is. We decide to do A instead of B and then the two roads diverge utterly and may lead in the end to heaven and to hell. Only later one sees how much and how awfully the fates differ. Yet what were the reasons for the choice? They may have been forgotten. Did one know what one was choosing? Certainly not.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea

“I may add here that one of the secrets of my happy life is that i have never made the mistake of learning to drive a car. I have never lacked people, usually women, longing to drive me withersoever I wanted. Why keep bitches and bark yourself?”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea

“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

“I want a girl because I want to bring her up so that she shan't make the mistakes I've made. When I look back upon the girl I was I hate myself. But I never had a chance. I'm going to bring up my daughter so that she's free and can stand on her own feet. I´m not going to bring a child into the world, and love her, and bring her up, just so that some man may want to sleep with her so much that he's willing to provide her with board and lodging for the rest of her life.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

“The whole world organizes itself around the fact that people manage to get their awkward bodies in position to fuck, an achievement honored by toasters, tandems, and tax cuts.”
― Lucy Ellmann, Dot in the Universe

“I forgive them because they're human and weak. The longer I live, the more I am overwhelmed by the utter, utter weakness of men; they do try to do their duty, they do their best honestly, they seek straight ways, but they're dreadfully weak. And so I think one ought to be sorry for them and make all possible allowances.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Merry-Go-Round