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
When I was young I had an elderly friend who used often to ask me to stay with him in the country. He was a religious man and he read prayers to the assembled household every morning. But he had crossed out in pencil all the passages that praised God. He said that there was nothing so vulgar as to praise people to their faces and, himself a gentleman, he could not believe that God was so ungentlemanly as to like it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that expressing praise can be seen as insincere and that true appreciation does not require public acknowledgment.
In this quote, W. Somerset Maugham reflects on the complexity of expressing reverence or praise, highlighting the perspective of an elderly friend who, despite being religious, believed that praising God openly was unrefined. The friend posited that genuine respect should be private and understated, questioning the virtue of overt admiration. This perspective invites readers to consider the authenticity of praises and the nature of relationships with the divine or with others, emphasizing a more nuanced understanding of reverence and humility.
Themes
PraiseHumilityReligionAuthenticityRelationships
In practice
Example use cases
During a philosophical debate on the importance of humility in leadership.
More from W. Somerset Maugham
All quotes →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
The intention to live as long as possible isn't one of the mind's best intentions, because quantity isn't the same as quality.
Deepak ChopraRead
The more laws that are written, the more criminals are produced.
LaoziRead
It is necessary, in this world, to be made of harder stuff than one's environment.
Aleister CrowleyRead
Thinking gives off smoke to prove the existence of fire. A mystic sits inside the burning. There are wonderful shapes in rising smoke that imagination loves to watch. But it's a mistake to leave the fire for that filmy sight. Stay here at the flame's core.
RumiRead
The human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What's left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars.
Bertolt BrechtRead
Jesus comes among us, in our all division, not to instruct, comfort or inspire but to die. In doing so, He answers the sum of our self-regard, stupidity and cruelty.
Richard ColesRead