a book (a bestseller, in fact):
by Thomas P Hunt, 1836
The Book of Wealth: In Which it is Proved from the Bible that it is the Duty
of Every Man to Become Rich.
p.86
“In every country the principal entertainment of society has become card
playing. It is a measure of the worth of society and the declared bankruptcy
of all ideas and thoughts… The term coquin meprisable [contemptible rogue]
is alas applicable to an unholy number of people in thie world.”
[Parerga and Paralipomena]
p.127
Alain quotes Schopenhauer as quoting Voltaire as saying “La terre est
couverte de gens qui ne meritent pas qu’on leur parle.” [the earth swarms
with people who are not worth talking to]
commerce:
INPUT OUTPUT
raw materials + labour + machinery = product + profit
Every organisation will attempt to gather raw materials, labour and
machinery at thelowest possible price to combine them into a product that
can be sold at the highest possible price. From the economic perspective,
there are no differences between any of the elements in the input side of
the equation… And yet, troublingly, there is one difference between
‘labour’ and other elements which conventional economics does not have a
means to represent… the fact that labour feels pain.
p.107
“The persons who become rich are, generally speaking, industrious, resolute,
proud, covetous, prompt, methodical, sensible, unimaginative, insensitive,
and ignorant. The persons who remain poor are the entirely foolish, the
entirely wise, the idle, the reckless, the humble, the thoughtful, the dull,
the imaginative, the sensitive, the well-informed, the improvident, the
irregularly and impulsively wicked, the clumsy knave, the open theif and the
entirely merciful just and godly person.”
[Unto This Last, John Ruskin 1862]
it can be as hard to hate a child as it can be to hate someone we see
sleeping. With their eyes closed and their features relaxes and
defenceless, sleepers invite a care and a kind of love – so much so that it
is embarrassing to gaze at length at a person asleep beside us on a train or
plane. Their face prompts us to an intimacy which throws into question the
edifice of civilized indifference on which ordinary communal relations are
built. But there is no such thing as a stranger, a Christian would insist,
there can only be an impression of strangeness born out of failure to
acknowledge that others share in our own needs and weaknesses.
p.258
In 1850, Gerard de Nerval ceased conforming to existing ideas of suitable
pets and acquired a lobster, which he led around the Jardin du Luxembourg on
the end of a blue ribbon. “why should a lobster be any more rediculous than
a dog,” he questioned, “or any other animal that one chooses to take for a
walk? I have a liking for lobsters. They are peaceful, serious creatures.
They know the secrets of the sea, they don’t bark, and they don’t gnaw upon
one’s monadic privacy like dogs do. And Goethe had an aversion to dogs, and
he wasn’t mad.”
p.294