nick

When I talk about enjoying the void, I’m aware that this might sound like a kind of suicidal, or life-denying impulse. It’s the opposite, though. It’s not that I don’t want more life, or that I act without concern for my physical safety. I really like life and the body I happen to live in. It’s just that I experience it as gratuitous, something

I am susceptible to frivolity. I know this about myself. I love beauty; I am weak to surfaces; I am apt to mistake eccentricity for character. I drink more than I should. I love overdressing; I love staying up past midnight; I love breakfasts at all-night diners, and the Irish coffees you order when you can’t decide whether it’s night or morning.

The wise use of leisure, it must be conceded, is a product of civilization and education. A man who has worked long hours all his life will be bored if he becomes suddenly idle. But without a considerable amount of leisure a man is cut off from many of the best things. There is no longer any reason why the bulk of the population should suffer this

Recognising the role of moral luck encourages empathy and humility, but it also threatens the notions of culpability that help us to make sense of evil.

The first hard choice

You must spend your life walking through fields of lotuses, listening to the beautiful music of the sirens.

Always, you could come closer to the sirens, and risk destroying yourself.

Always, you could eat more of the lotus, and you could choose to abandon what matters.

This is the first hard choice. You must choose to be the kind

All this is only preliminary. I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by the belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work.