Brenton

“... the typical worker who through the whole of his life...pursues the idea of a certain artificial and elegant repose which he may never arrive at, for which he sacrifices a real tranquility...It is this deception which rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind.”
― Adam Smith

“Etymologically, "compassion" means to suffer together. "Together," however, is different from "identically." Compassion is not the same as selflessness, and not really the opposite of selfishness. Rather, it provides a basis for helping other people that is materially disinterested but emotionally self-regarding. As Rousseau wrote in Emile, "When the strength of an expansive soul makes me identify myself with my fellow, and I feel that I am, so to speak, in him, it is in order not to suffer that I do not want him to suffer. I am interested in him for love of myself..." Or, as Jean Bethke Elshtain has said, "Pity is about how deeply I can feel. And in order to feel this way, to experience the rush of my own pious reaction, I need victims the way an addict needs drugs.”
― William Voegeli, Never Enough: America's Limitless Welfare State

“It turns out that what money buys has rapidly diminishing emotional returns ... As long as we're not destitute, happiness depends less on getting what we want than appreciating what we already have.”
― Robert B. Reich

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
― C. S. Lewis