Aging & Wisdom Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

Nostalgia is the quiet con artist in Maugham's line, selling youth as a lost paradise to people who are finally old enough to know better. Calling happiness in youth an "illusion" isn’t a cheap contrarian move; it’s a jab at the way memory edits life into a highlight reel. The trick is in the second clause: the illusion belongs not to the young, who are busy surviving their own confusion, but to "those who have lost it". Youth becomes a story the aging tell themselves to make their present feel like decline rather than simply different.

Maugham, a playwright with a clinician’s eye for self-deception, is targeting a particular sentimental myth: that young people are naturally carefree. His subtext is sharper. Youth is often anxious, status-obsessed, hormonally chaotic, financially precarious, and trapped inside other people’s schedules. It can be vivid, yes, but vividness isn’t the same as happiness. The older observer projects peace onto youth because they’re remembering physical ease, not emotional ease; they’re remembering options, not the terror of choosing.

The line also performs a little moral reversal. It refuses to flatter either camp. It denies the old the comforting romance of what they’ve lost, and it denies the young the cultural permission to treat their turbulence as a betrayal of the "best years". In a society that markets youth as a product and nostalgia as a lifestyle, Maugham’s sentence is a small act of sabotage: your longing may be less truth than narrative.