Why d’you read then?”
“Partly for pleasure, and because it’s a habit and I’m just as uncomfortable if I don’t read as if I don’t smoke, and partly to know myself. When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me; I’ve got out of the book all that’s any use to me, and I can’t get anything more if I read it a dozen times. You see, it seems to me, one’s like a closed bud, and most of what one reads and does has no effect at all; but there are certain things that have a peculiar significance for one, and they open a petal; and the petals open one by one and at last the flower is there.
It is an illusion that youth is happy: an illusion of those who have lost it;
but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come into contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded... they must discover for themselves that all they have read and been been told [by their elders] are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body of the cross of life.
[Hayward] honestly mistook his sensuality for romantic emotion, his vacillation for artistic temperament, and his idleness for philosophical calm... He was an idealist.
W. Somerset Maugham... how much less is the sense of obligation in those
who receive favours than in those who grant them." Somerset Maugham
I should have known that I wasn't meant for happiness and a life of ease. I have other work to do in the world.
W. Somerset MaughamWe're all so dreadfully tired of being goddesses. For centuries foolish men have set us up on a pedestal and vowed they were unworthy to touch the hem of our garments. And it is so dull.
W. Somerset MaughamSupposing there is no life everlasting. Think what it means if death is really the end of all things. They've given up all for nothing. They've been cheated. They're dupes."
Waddington reflected for a little while. "I wonder if it matters what they have aimed at is illusion. Their lives are in themselves beautiful. 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 the write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.
Stichwörter: life philosophy religion existentialism
You rejoice in your freedom, and you feel that at last you can call your soul your own. You seem to walk with your head among the stars. And then, all of a sudden you can't stand it anymore, and you notice that all the time your feet have been walking in the mud.
W. Somerset MaughamHere was a man who sincerely did not mind what people thought of him, and so convention had no hold on him; he was like a wrestler whose body is oiled; you could not get a grip on him; it gave him a freedom which was an outrage.
W. Somerset MaughamShe loved three things — a joke, a
glass of wine, and a handsome man.
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