“To enjoy good houses and good books in self-respect and decent comfort, seems to me to be the pleasurable end towards which all societies of human beings ought now to struggle.”
Old-Fashioned Fruitcake
Old-Fashioned Fruitcake
“To enjoy good houses and good books in self-respect and decent comfort, seems to me to be the pleasurable end towards which all societies of human beings ought now to struggle.”
“It is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects — military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden — that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time.” — C. S. Lewis
Hear hear!
I was a little worried that that C. S. Lewis quote, in isolation, might give the impression that he would approve of the kind of authoritarian government that tries to make people happy whether they want to be or not. I get the impression that in reality, he opposed such things. For example, he also said “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”