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"It seemed to him that all his life he had followed the ideals that other people, by their words or their writings, had instilled into him, and never the desires of his own heart. Always his course had been swayed by what he thought he should do and never by what he wanted with his whole soul to do. He had lived always in the future, and the present always, always had slopped through his fingers. His ideals? He thought of his desire to make a design, intricate and beautiful, out of the myriad pattern, that in which a man was born, worked, married, had children, and died, was likewise the most perfect? It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories."
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Exlpore more Reflection quotes
"Solitude is a wonderful treasure the world is still yet to discover."
"The question "who am I" is the first question that every person should ask himself."
"The time we are living in is a significant time."
"Every human being is a reflection of this universe."
"Find a place to think and a person to love and be happy."
"The purpose of our activities on earth must go beyond bread and butter or merely surviving."
"Take one minute every day and think hard about your life. You will always change for the best."
"Carefully analyze the old stories that you choose to perpetually tell, for these are really life-long meditations."
"If you don't want to regret your life later, then begin to invest your time, begin to measure your life. Measure your life by the products and by the results you produce!"
"One secret to wisdom: think more, speak less. If you let your words be few, your troubles will not be many."
Explore more quotes by W. Somerset Maugham
"They will notdisappoint you, and you will look upon them morecharitably. Men seek but one thing in life-their pleasure."
"You've been brought up like a gentleman and a Christian, and I should be false to the trust laid upon me by your dead father and mother if I allowed you to expose yourself to such temptation.'Well, I know I'm not a Christian and I'm beginning to doubt whether I'm a gentleman,' said Philip."
"Everything passed, and what trace of its passage remained? It seemed to Kitty that they were all, the human race, like the drops of water in that river and they flowed on, each so close to the other and yet so far apart, a nameless flood, to the sea. When all things lasted so short a time and nothing mattered very much, it seemed pitiful that men, attaching an absurd importance to trivial objects, should make themselves and one another so unhappy."
"On the earth, satellite of a star speeding through space, living things had arisen under the influence of conditions which were part of the planet's history; and as there had been a beginning of life upon it, so, under the influence of other conditions, there would be an end: man, no more significant than other forms of life, had come not as the climax of creation but as a physical reaction to the environment."
"It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you for it was the illusion they loved."
"It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories."
"A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her . . . but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account."
"I am willing to take life as a game of chess in which the first rules are not open to discussion. No one asks why the knight is allowed his eccentric hop, why the castle may only go straight and the bishop obliquely. These things are to be accepted, and with these rule the game must be played: it is foolish to complain of them."
"Oh, it's always the same,' she sighed, 'if you want men to behave well to you, you must be beastly to them; if you treat them decently they make you suffer for it."
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