Work and Leisure

“Leisure,” he said, “if people only knew: Its the most precious thing a man can have and they are such fools they don’t even know it’s something to aim at. Work? They work for work’s sake. They haven’t got the brains to realise that the only object of work is to obtain leisure.”

“Most people, the vast majority in fact, lead the lives that circumstances have thrust upon them, and though some repine, find themselves square pegs in round holes and think that if things had been different they might have made a much better showing. The greater part accept their lot, if not with serenity, at all events with resignation. They are like tramcars travelling for ever on the self-same rails. They go backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards inevitably till they can no longer and then are sold as scrap iron. . . .”

(From “The Lotus Eater,” by Somerset Maugham.)