Quotes from book

Of Human Bondage

“But when all was said the important thing was to love rather than to be loved.”

“I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the centre of the world.”

“People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.”

“Life wouldn't be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present. When things are at their worst I find something always happens.”

“The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.”

“It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.”

“It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic.”

“Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.”

“There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.”

“It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.”

“He had doubts about the utility of examination on subjects which had been crammed for the occasion. He wanted common sense.”

“He was always seeking for a meaning in life, and here it seemed to him that a meaning was offered; but it was obscure and vague. He was profoundly troubled. He saw what looked like the truth as by flashes of lightning on a dark, stormy night you might see a mountain range. He seemed to see that a man need not leave his life to chance, but that his will was powerful; he seemed to see that self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion; he seemed to see that the inward life might be as manifold, as varied, as rich with experience, as the life of one who conquered realms and explored unknown lands.”

“Men seek but one thing in life — their pleasure.”

“D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.”

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

“Of course it was cause and effect, but in the necessity with which follows the other lay all tragedy of life.”

“Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.”

“There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one's means of livelihood…Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.”

“You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action.”