W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

We are prone to seek immediate pleasure or good, however small, rather than remote pleasure or good, however vast.

Seek instant gratification - or the elusive promise of it - and chances are you'll find a crowd there ahead of you.

There is no use if knowledge grows while desires multiply. It makes one a hero in words and a zero in action.

"Akrasia" [weakness of will] in rational beings is as common as wine in France.

Adults devise a plan and follow it, children do what feels good.

It is madness to risk losing what you need in pursuing what you simply desire.

The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want right now

Don't pass up something that's attractive today because you think you will find something way more attractive tomorrow.

Years of happiness can be lost in the foolish gratification of a momentary desire for pleasure.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

Positive defaults align our short-term decisions with our long-term interests. And we don't always do that.

I don't think patience is something that any of us grow up with in a large dose. It's a world of instant gratification.

I have to take decisions—not back hunches.

When a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.

Working is not instantly rewarding. It's a long process, and it's much easier to just feed whatever dopamine cycles exist in your brain in instant gratification ways. I get it; I do it.

I still think carefully about what I'm going to say. I use me heart and head technique, in which the heart says, 'get stuck in, Dennis!', and the head says, 'just a minute... ' But I probably don't use this as often as some others.

Those split-second decisions that you can't take back, that's what I need to continue to improve.

I can't tell you how many times I hit that mat, especially that first year, where I said to myself, 'Man, this fake stuff hurts like hell. Do I really want to do this?' And every time, I would come back, 'Yeah, I wanna do this.'

No one wants to be patient. No one wants to wait for anything. They want it right now - that instant gratification.

You will be a happier person if you don't do what you want to do, most of the time

This is not a game, ... Debt has become a part of who we are. It's become that spoiled child in the grocery store with their lip stuck out: 'I want it. I want it. I deserve it because I breathe air.' And, well, that's an uphill climb in our culture right now, to go against that and say, 'Hey, let's be grownups here. Let's be mature, learn to delay pleasure, save up and pay for things.'

Immaturity is the inability to delay self gratification.

Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.

When we can see an immediate payoff, we are more likely to change our behavior in the moment. This aligns our daily actions with our long-term interests.

Remember anything you want that's valuable requires you to break through short-term pain in order to gain long-term pleasure.