Darrell

“A man may have a great suite of attendants, a beautiful palace, great influence and a large income. All that may surround him, but it is not in him… . Measure his height with his stilts off: let him lay aside his wealth and his decorations and show himself to us naked… . What sort of soul does he have? Is his soul a beautiful one, able, happily endowed with all her functions? Are her riches her own or are they borrowed? Has luck had nothing to do with it? … That is what we need to know; that is what the immense distances between us men should be judged by.”
― Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety

“If we cannot stop envying, it seems especially poignant that we should be constrained to spend so much of our lives envying the wrong things.”
― Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety

“societies, to “luck,” “providence” or “God” is a reflection of the collective secular faith we now place in individual will power. Financial failures are judged to be similarly merited, with unemployment’s bearing some of the shame that physical cowardice earned in warrior eras. Money is meanwhile invested with an ethical quality. Its relative quantity indicates the virtue of its possessor, as do the material goods it can buy. Like the Cubeo’s necklace of jaguar teeth, a prosperous way of life signals worthiness, while ownership of a rusted old car or a threadbare home may prompt suppositions of moral deficiency.”
― Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety

“Because societies are in practise trusted to be “meritocratic,” financial achievements are necessarily understood to be “deserved.” The ability to accumulate wealth is prized as proof of the presence of at least four cardinal virtues: creativity, courage, intelligence and stamina. The presence or absence of other virtues— humility and godliness, for example—rarely detains attention.”
― Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety