Ben Walker’s Reviews > Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family > Status Update

I love this quote, in a letter Consul Buddenbrook to Tony : ‘We are not born for that which, with our short-sighted vision, we reckon to be our own small personal happiness. We are not free, separate, and independ entities, but like links in a chain, and we could not by any means be what we are without those who went before us and showed us the way.’