Success Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

Maugham flips a familiar moral fable on its head, and the pleasure is in how calmly he does it. The line begins by borrowing the voice of public wisdom - “the common idea” - only to dismiss it as “erroneous,” a word that carries the cool authority of someone who has watched reputations curdle and has no patience for cheap certainty. As a playwright and chronicler of social maneuvering, Maugham knew that “success spoils” is often less an insight than a consolation prize: a story the spectators tell themselves to make the winner’s trophy feel tacky.

The subtext is not starry-eyed. He’s not claiming success makes saints; he’s diagnosing what security can do to temperament. Failure tightens the psyche. It makes people defensive, status-obsessed, quick to interpret the world as a tribunal. Success, at least “for the most part,” loosens that grip. When you’re not fighting to be seen, you can afford to see others. Humility here isn’t self-abasement; it’s the quieting of the constant internal audition. Tolerance is easier when your identity isn’t a precarious construction.

Context matters: Maugham wrote from inside the machinery of prestige - the stage, the literary marketplace, the expatriate circuit - where envy poses as morality and criticism can be a social sport. His phrasing carries a backstage cynicism about “virtue” narratives. The real provocation is ethical: if kindness is partly a byproduct of comfort, then our admiration for the gracious successful person and our suspicion of them are both suspect. The quote nudges the reader to ask whether we indict success to protect our own pride, and whether we romanticize struggle because it flatters our sense of character.