Wednesday, November 18, 2015

The Best Advice on Giving Advice from One of the Greatest Short Story Writers in the world....



“I have always hesitated to give advice, for how can one advise another on how to act unless one knows the other as well as one knows oneself? Heaven knows I know little enough about myself: I know nothing of others. W can only guess at the thoughts and emotions of our neighbours. Each one of us is a prisoner in a solitary tower and he communicates with the other prisoners, who form mankind, by conventional signs that have not quite the same meaning for them as for himself. And life, unfortunately, is something that you can lead but once: mistakes are often irreparable, and who am I that I should tell this one and that how he should lead it? Life is a difficult business and i have found it hard enough to make my own a complete and rounded thing; I have not been tempted to teach my neighbour what he should do with his.

From “The Happy man”, short story be Somerset Maugham