It is an illusion that youth is happy,

an illusion of those who have lost it;

but the youg know they are wretched,

for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them,

and each time they come in contact with the real they are burised and wounded.

It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy;

for the books they read,

ideal by the necessity of selection,

and the conversation of their elders,

who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness,

prepare them for an unreal life.

They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies;

and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life.

The strange thing is that each one who has gone through

that bitter disillusionment adds to it in his turn, unconsciously,

by the power within him which is stronger than himself.



William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
Of Human Bondage