I don't see the use of reading the same thing over and over again, ' said Phillip. 'That's only a laborious form of idleness.' But are you under the impression that you have so great a mind that you can understand the most profound writer at a first reading?' I don't want to understand him, I'm not a critic. I'm not interested in him for his sake but for mine.' Why do you read then?' Partly for pleasure, because it's a habit and I'm just as uncomfortable if I don't read as if I don't smoke, and partly to know myself. When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me; I've got out of the book all that's any use to me and I can't get anythning more if I read it a dozen times.. . W. Somerset Maugham
About This Quote

The quotation “I don't see the use of reading the same thing over and over again” is a quote from the novel “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens, in which Pip believes reading the same story repeatedly is a waste of time. But he is not correct in his assessment that we should always read something we enjoy just because we enjoy it. We should read something because we want to know about it. The only way we can develop and grow as individuals and as a society is by reading what we do not understand and learning from it.

Source: Of Human Bondage

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More Quotes By W. Somerset Maugham
  1. The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.
  2. How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.
  3. As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.
  4. He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other.
  5. If a man hasn't what's necessary to make a woman love him, it's his fault, not hers.
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