Saturday 29 November 2014

People without imagination should make money

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People without imagination should pursue well paid careers. For them money supplies poetry.

Robert Graves was told by his publisher


There's no money in poetry

To which he replied 


There's no poetry in money. 

But in fact it depends on what poetry means to you. 

A. H. Clough's Spectator ab Extra expresses many people's philosophy, including that of quite a few nouveaux-riches I know in Bucharest (almost all the riche here are nouveaux)


They may talk as they please about what they call pelf, 

And how one ought never to think of one’s self, 

How pleasures of thought surpass eating and drinking— 

My pleasure of thought is the pleasure of thinking 

How pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho! 

How pleasant it is to have money. 


Schopenhauer was characteristically bleaker:


"Money is happiness in abstracto; he, therefore, who is no longer capable of enjoying happiness in the concrete pursues money.

But Schopenhauer was wrong. Lots of people find great happiness in money. 

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