Andrew Stewart’s Reviews > Essays and Aphorisms > Status Update

Thrusymachus: Childish and altogether ludicrous is what you yourself are, and all philosophers; and if a grown-up man like me spends 15 minutes with fools of this kind, it is merely a way of passing the time. I’ve now got more important things to do, goodbye.

“You can also look up upon our life as an episode unprofitably disturbing the blessed calm of nothingness…
For the world is hell, and men are on the one hand the tormented souls, and on the other the devils in it.”

Aw come on bud. Onward and upward yeah?

“A quick test of the assertion that enjoyment outweighs pain in this world, or that they are at any rate balanced, would be to compare the feelings of an animal engaged in eating another with those of the animal being eaten.”
!!

How’s this for a tone setter:

“If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering, then our existence is the most ill adopted to its purpose in the world…
Each individual misfortune, to be sure, seems an exceptional occurrence; but misfortune in general is the rule.”