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
There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Freedom of thought and action are essential for a fulfilling life.
This quote emphasizes the importance of having both the ability to think independently and the freedom to act on one's thoughts. It suggests that true happiness and fulfillment in life come from the autonomy to make one's own decisions and to cultivate one's own ideas.
Themes
FreedomThoughtActionLifeWisdom
In practice
Example use cases
To inspire students, a teacher could say, 'There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action.'
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
Stupidity is an elemental force for which no earthquake is a match.
Karl KrausRead
To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject.
Georg C. LichtenbergRead
The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave.
Mark TwainRead
Honest error is to be pitied not ridiculed.
Lord ChesterfieldRead
The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.Read
Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just parts of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive. If any system teaches you how to be attentive, then you are attentive to the system, and that is not attention.
Jiddu KrishnamurtiRead