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“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 ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“I have nothing but contempt for the people who despise money. They are hypocrites or fools. Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five. Without an adequate income half the possibilities of life are shut off. The only thing to be careful about is that you do not pay more than a shilling for the shilling you earn. You will hear people say that poverty is the best spur to the artist. They have never felt the iron of it in their flesh. They do not know how mean it makes you. It exposes you to endless humiliation, it cuts your wings, it eats into your soul like a cancer.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“From old habit, unconsciously he thanked God that he no longer believed in Him.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“They're a funny lot, suicides. I remember one man who couldn't get any work to do and his wife died, so he pawned his clothes and bought a revolver; but he made a mess of it, he only shot out an eye and he got alright. And then, if you please, with an eye gone and a piece of his face blown away, he came to the conclusion that the world wasn't such a bad place after all, and he lived happily ever afterwards. Thing I've always noticed, people don't commit suicide for love, as you'd expect, that's just a fancy of novelists; they commit suicide because they haven't got any money. I wonder why that is."
"I suppose money's more important than love," suggest Philip.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“Philip got up and knelt down to say his prayers. It was a cold morning, and he shivered a little; but he had been taught by his uncle that his prayers were more acceptable to God if he said them in his nightshirt than if he waited till he was dressed. This did not surprise him, for he was beginning to realize that he was a creature of a God who appreciated the discomfort of his worshippers.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“There was no meaning in life, and man by living served no end. It was immaterial whether he was born or not born, whether he lived or ceased to live. Life was insignificant and death without consequence. Philip exulted, as he had exulted in his boyhood when the weight of a belief in God was lifted from his shoulders: it seemed to him that the last burden of responsibility was taken from him; and for the first time he was utterly free. His insignificance was turned to power, and he felt himself suddenly equal with the cruel fate which had seemed to persecute him; for, if life was meaningless, the world was robbed of its cruelty. What he did or left undone did not matter. Failure was unimportant and success amounted to nothing. He was the most inconsiderate creature in that swarming mass of mankind which for a brief space occupied the surface of the earth; and he was almighty because he had wrenched from chaos the secret of its nothingness. Thoughts came tumbling over one another in Philip's eager fancy, and he took long breaths of joyous satisfaction. He felt inclined to leap and sing. He had not been so happy for months.

'Oh, life,' he cried in his heart, 'Oh life, where is thy sting?”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“Il cardiologo gli aveva ordinato di non fare bagni troppo freddo, ma lui aveva bisogno di un bagno freddo, lascio che la vasca si riempisse di acqua fredda e vi si immerse. Mentra staba immerso n'lacqua si accarezzo a lungo il ventre. Pereira, si disse, una volta la tua vita e estata diversa. Si asciugo e si infilo il pigiama. ndo fino all'ingresso, si fermo davanti al ritrato di sua mogli e gli disse: stassera vedo Monteiro Rossi, non so perche no lo licenzio o non lo mando a quel paese, ha dei problemi e vuole scaricarli su di me, questo l'ho capito, tu cosa ne dici, cosa devo fare? Il ritratto di sua moglie gli sorrise con un sorriso lontano. Bene, disse Pereira, ora vado a fare una siesta, sentiro dopo cosa vuole quel giovanotto. E si ando a coricare.”
― Antonio Tabucchi

“As commonly practised, philosophy is the attempt to find good reasons for conventional beliefs'
'There is no mechanism of selection in the history of ideas akin to that of the natural selection of genetic mutations in evolution'
'Human knowledge is one thing, human well-being is another.There is no predetermined harmony between the two'
'In the struggle for life, the taste for truth is a luxury-or else a disability”
― John Gray, Perros de paja: Reflexiones sobre los humanos y otros animales

“Humans think they are free, conscious beings, when in truth they are deluded animals. At the same time they never cease trying to escape from what they imagine themselves to be. Their religions are attempts to be rid of a freedom they have never possessed. In the twentieth century, the utopias of Right and Left served the same function. Today, when politics is unconvincing even as entertainment, science has taken on the role of mankind's deliverer.”
― John Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

“People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.”
― Hannah Arendt

“Anyone who truly wants to escape human solipsism should not seek out empty places. Instead of fleeing to desert, where they will be thrown back into their own thoughts, they will d better to seek out the company of other animals.

A zoo is a better window from which to look out of the human world than a monastery.”
― John Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

“Los artesanos tienen sueños apacibles. La mitología cristiana eligió para padrastro de Dios a un carpintero, no a un filósofo, ni a un poeta, ni por supuesto, a un soldado, a un político, y ni siquiera a un cura.”
― Rafael Chirbes, Crematorio

“El sufrimiento es el precio que se paga uno a sí mismo”
― Rafel Chirbes

“Los sentimientos no son precisamente ni lo más fuerte, ni lo más seguro, n lo más duradero. Los sobrevaloramos. Tienen más que ver con lo animal, con la secreción salival de los perros de Pavlov cuando oyen el sonido que les anuncia la llegada de la comida. Babeo .No son los sentimientos lo más humano. Lo humano es la inteligencia, y seguramente la capacidad para planear el mal a largo plazo..”
― Rafel Chirbes

“Cada vez que se acaba una etapa de ideas más o menos racionales vuelven las viejas supersticiones con renovada energía. Mira el islam, creíamos que había muerto, pero no, ese huevo estaba enterrado calentándose bajo la arena de los desiertos, incubándose (...) El pasado es un alien que llevamos todos dentro, que engorda, que está ahí siempre a punto de reventarnos el pecho y escapar.(...)Los momentos de luz son pasajeros, inestables. Hoy llamamos progreso a algo que no sabemos cómo lo llamarán los que vengan. La oscuridad es el estado natural: en cuanto el hombre se descuida, vuelve lo oscuro. En la vida privada ocurre lo misno. En cuanto te descuidas tres o cuatro días sin hacer limpieza, lo oscuro, lo sucio, lo prehumano, empieza a comerte. Cuesta mucha energía mantener encendida la lucecita de la civilización. En cualquier caso, todo eso que se nos antoja irremediable a lo mejor les parece una broma a los que vengan luego. Seguramente será así. Juan: Lo peor siempre está por llegar.”
― Rafel Chirbes

“The destruction of the natural world is not the result of global capitalism, industrialisation, ‘Western civilisationâ€� or any flaw in human institutions. It is a consequence of the evolutionary success of an exceptionally rapacious primate. Throughout all of history and prehistory, human advance has coincided with ecological devastation.”
― John Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts On Humans And Other Animals

“Over the past two hundred years philosophy has shaken off Christian faith. It has not given up Christianity's cardinal error -the belief that humans are radically different from all other animals.”
― John Gray, Perros de paja: Reflexiones sobre los humanos y otros animales

“Darwin's theory shows the truth of naturalism: we are animals like any other; our fate and that of the rest of life on Earth are the same. Yet, in an irony all the more exquisite because no one has noticed it, Darwinism is now the central prop of the humanist faith that we can transcend our animal natures and rule the Eart.”
― John Gray, Perros de paja: Reflexiones sobre los humanos y otros animales

“In the struggle for life, a taste for truth is a luxury--or else a disability.”
― John Gray, Perros de paja: Reflexiones sobre los humanos y otros animales

“There is no mechanism of selection in the history of ideas akin to that of the natural selection of genetic mutations in evolution”
― John Gray, Perros de paja: Reflexiones sobre los humanos y otros animales

“Modern humanism is the faith that through science humankind can know the truth- and to be free. But if Darwin's theory of natural selection is true this is impossible. The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth. To think otherwise is to resurrect the pre-Darwinian error that humans are different from all other animals. (...) There is no mechanism of selection in the history of ideas akin to that of the natural selection of genetic mutations in evolution.(...) Among humans, the best deceivers are those who deceive themselves: 'we deceive ourselves in order to deceive others better'. A lover who promises eternal fidelity s more likely to be believed if he believes his promise himself; he is no more likely to keep his promise.(...) In a competition for mates, a well-developed capacity for self-deception is an advantage.”
― John Gray, Perros de paja: Reflexiones sobre los humanos y otros animales

“Those who ignore the destructive potential of new technologies can do so only because they ignore history . Pogroms are as old as Christendom , but without railways, the telegraph and poison gas there could have been no Holocaust. (..) Scientific fundamentalism claim that science is the disinterested pursuit of the truth. But to represent science in this way is to disregard the human needs science serves. Among us science serves two needs: for hope and censorship. Today only science supports the myth of progress. If people cling to the hope of progress, it is not so much from genuine belief as from fear of what may come if they give it up.”
― John Gray, Perros de paja: Reflexiones sobre los humanos y otros animales

“Perhaps what distinguishes humans from other animals is that humans have learned to cling more abjectly to life”
― John Gray, Doug Platt (introduction), Perros de paja: Reflexiones sobre los humanos y otros animales

“The Buddha promised release from something we all understand: suffering. By contrast, no one can say what was the original sin, and no one understands how the suffering of Christ can redeem it.”
― John Gray, Perros de paja: Reflexiones sobre los humanos y otros animales

“For people in thrall to 'mortality', the good life means perpetual striving. For Taoists it means living effortlessly, according to our natures. The freest human being is not one who acts on reasons he has chosen for himself, but one who never has to choose. Rather than agonizing about alternatives he responds effortlessly to situations as they arise. He lives not as he chooses but as he must.”
― John Gray, Perros de paja: Reflexiones sobre los humanos y otros animales

“The Buddhist ideal of awakening implies that we can sever our links with our evolutionary past. We can raise ourselves from the sleep in which other animals pass their lives. Our illusions dissolved, we need no longer suffer. This is only another doctrine of salvation, subtler than that of the Christians, but no different from Christianity in its goal of leaving our animal inheritance behind.
But the idea that we can rid ourselves of animal illusion is the greatest illusion of all. meditation may give us a fresher view of things but cannot uncover them as they are in themselves.”
― John Gray, Perros de paja: Reflexiones sobre los humanos y otros animales

“Today, nearly everyone is much better off. Yet the rackety existence of the majority is as far removed from the security enjoyed by the truly wealthy as it was in Victorian times.(...) The wealthy can pass their lives without contact with the rest of society. So long as they do not pose a threat to the reach, the poor can be left to their own devices. Social democracy has been replaced by the oligarchy of the rich as part of the price of peace.”
― John Gray, Perros de paja: Reflexiones sobre los humanos y otros animales

“Science enables humans to satisfy their needs. It does nothing to change them. They are no different today from what they have always been. There is progress in knowledge, but not in ethics. This s the verdict both of science and history, and the view of every one of the world's religions.”
― John Gray, Perros de paja: Reflexiones sobre los humanos y otros animales