Daniel Goodman

“Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.”
― Alain de Botton

“The idea of autonomy denies that we are born into a world that existed prior to us. It posits an essential aloneness; an autonomous being is free in the sense that a being severed from all others is free. To regard oneself this way is to betray the natural debts we owe to the world, and commit the moral error of ingratitude. For in fact we are basically dependent beings: one upon another, and each on a world that is of our making.”
― Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work

“The ultimate meaning of the active life is to make possible the happiness of contemplation.”
― Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation

“What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?”
― Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory