of human bondage

I read this book YEARS ago, and just finished it again yesterday.  It now ranks among my top five novels of all time. Truly a masterpiece of brilliant proportions with power to stun readers with universal emotion and truth.  I was moved to tears as I read Maugham's final words - grateful for the heart wrenching and passionate life experience of Phillip Carey.

The writing is fascinating from beginning to end, and oh how I wish I could take raw emotion, regret, faith, sorrow, joy, pain, idealism, pride, happiness, disillusionment, beauty, love, irrationality, hope . . .  and capture it on paper. Somerset Maugham did just that almost a hundred years ago in this observant classic which continues to haunt our innermost fears and desires, and persuade readers to question the purpose of living in a world that at times seems hopeless.

Of the several dog-eared pages of my book, one passage in the final chapters stands out as Phillip faces the handicap that he has struggled against for so long . . .

He accepted the deformity which had made life so hard for him; he knew that it had warped his character, but now he saw also that by reason of it he had acquired that power of introspection which had given him so much delight.  Without it he would never have had his keen appreciation of beauty, his passion for art and literature, and his interest in the varied spectacle of life.  The ridicule and contempt which had so often been heaped upon him had turned his mind inward and called for those flowers which he felt would ever lose their fragrance.  Then he saw that normal was the rarest thing in the world.  Everyone had some defect, of body or of mind:  he thought of all the people he had known (the whole world was like a sick-house, and there was no rhyme or reason in it), he saw a long procession, deformed in body and warped in mind, some with illness of the flesh, weak hearts or weak lungs, and some with illness of the spirit, languor of will, or a craving for liquor.  At this moment he could feel a holy compassion for them all.  They were the helpless instruments of blind chance.  He could pardon Griffiths for his treachery and Mildred for the pain she had caused him.  They could not help themselves.  The only reasonable thing was to accept the good of men and be patient with their faults.  The words of the dying God crossed his memory:

Forgive them, for they know not what they do.