QuoteProject
The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
W. Somerset Maugham
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

True fulfillment comes from giving love rather than seeking it.

This quote emphasizes the significance of love as an act of giving rather than merely a feeling one seeks to receive. It suggests that the essence of love lies not in being loved but in the ability and willingness to love others, highlighting the selfless nature of genuine affection.

Themes

LoveSelflessnessAffectionGivingRelationship

In practice

Example use cases

During a wedding toast, one might reflect on the importance of selfless love.

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

Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.
Victor HugoRead
When women cease to be handsome, they study to be good.
Benjamin FranklinRead
Stand and face me, my love,and scatter the grace in your eyes.
SapphoRead
Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.
Toni MorrisonRead
I'll make my heaven in a lady's lap
William ShakespeareRead
I never thought before, that there was a woman in the world who could affect me so much by saying so little. But don't be hard in your construction of me. You don't know what my state of mind towards you is. You don't know how you haunt and bewilder me. You don't know how the cursed carelessness that is over-officious in helping me at every other turning of my life WON'T help me here. You have struck it dead, I think, and I sometimes wish you had struck me dead along with it.
Charles DickensRead

A little wisdom, now and then

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