Dan S

“It is one of the evils of rapid diffusion of news that the sorrows of all the world come to us every morning. I think each village was meant to feel pity for it’s own sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills which he cannot help. (This may even become an escape from the works of charity we really can do to those we know). A great many people do now seem think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious. I don’t think it is. We must, if it so happens, give our lives for others: but even while we’re doing it, I think we’re meant to enjoy Our Lord and, in Him, our friends, our food, our sleep, your jokes, and the birds song and the frosty sunrise.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Quotable Lewis

“A deepening class divide makes social mobility all but impossible. The result is a de facto caste system. This is not only morally wrong but also tremendously wasteful. Denying access to opportunity for large segments of the population means throwing away vast reserves of talent and brainpower. It’s also been shown to dampen economic growth.”
― Jessica Bruder, Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

“I could have done that, Marilyn thought. And the words clicked into place like puzzle pieces, shocking her in their rightness. The hypothetical past-perfect. The tense of missed chances. Tears dripped down her chin. No! She though suddenly. I could do that.”
― Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You

“We have become a civilization based on work—not even “productive work” but work as an end and meaning in itself.”
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory