“It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late.”

— W. Somerset Maugham , book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 51

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 4, 2020. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late." by W. Somerset Maugham?

W. Somerset Maugham 158

British playwright, novelist, short story writer 1874–1965

Related quotes

“Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Variant: One of the great secrets of life. Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense and discover too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“And it was too late. No one wants to believe something is too late, but it is always becoming too late, and then it is.”

Elizabeth Strout book The Burgess Boys

Source: The Burgess Boys

“One knows so little. When one knows more it is too late.”

Agatha Christie book Three Act Tragedy

Source: Three Act Tragedy

“But, no. It was too late. Fortune’s die was cast. The cruel game had to be played to its end, no matter what anyone wanted.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 104, “Taglios: View from the Protector’s Windows” (p. 676)

“This is the problem of all great revelations: their significance so often exceeds the frame of our comprehension. We understand only after, always after. Not simply when it is too late, but precisely because it is too late.”

R. Scott Bakker book The Darkness That Comes Before

Source: The Darkness That Comes Before

“Or is there no such thing as 'too late'? Is there only 'late' and is 'late' always better than 'never'? I don't know.”

Bernhard Schlink book The Reader

Source: The Reader

“It is too late."

The old man shook his head. "It is never too late or too soon. It is when it is supposed to be."

He smiled. "There is a plan, Dor.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Time Keeper

“One can't judge till one's forty; before that we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too ignorant.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“But it was too late now. A lifetime too late. A million wishes too late.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Blue-Eyed Devil

“Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul.”

Epicurus Letter to Menoeceus

"Letter to Menoeceus" http://www.epicurus.net/en/menoeceus.html, as translated in Stoic and Epicurean (1910) by Robert Drew Hicks, p. 167
Variant translation: Let no one delay to study philosophy while he is young, and when he is old let him not become weary of the study; for no man can ever find the time unsuitable or too late to study the health of his soul. And he who asserts either that it is not yet time to philosophize, or that the hour is passed, is like a man who should say that the time is not yet come to be happy, or that it is too late. So that both young and old should study philosophy, the one in order that, when he is old, he many be young in good things through the pleasing recollection of the past, and the other in order that he may be at the same time both young and old, in consequence of his absence of fear for the future.
Context: Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more. Therefore, both old and young alike ought to seek wisdom, the former in order that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come. So we must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed towards attaining it.