"There were once upon a time two sausage machines, exquisitely constructed
for the purpose of turning pig into the most delicious sausages.
One of these retained his zest for pig and produced sausages innumerable;
the other said: ‘What is pig to me? My own works are far more interesting
and wonderful than any pig.’ He refused pig and set to work to study his
inside. When bereft of its natural food, his inside ceased to function, and the
more he studied it, the more empty and foolish it seemed to him to be. All the
exquisite apparatus by which the delicious transformation had hitherto been
made stood still, and he was at a loss to guess what it was capable of doing.
This second sausage machine was like the man who has lost his zest, while
the first was like the man who has retained it. The mind is a strange machine
which can combine the materials offered to it in the most astonishing ways,
but without materials from the external world it is powerless, and unlike the
sausage machine it must seize its materials for itself, since events only
become experiences through the interest that we take in them: if they do not
interest us, we are making nothing of them. The man, therefore, whose
attention is turned within finds nothing worthy of his notice, whereas the
man whose attention is turned outward can find within, in those rare
moments when he examines his soul, the most varied and interesting
assortment of ingredients being dissected and recombined into beautiful or
instructive patterns."
for the purpose of turning pig into the most delicious sausages.
One of these retained his zest for pig and produced sausages innumerable;
the other said: ‘What is pig to me? My own works are far more interesting
and wonderful than any pig.’ He refused pig and set to work to study his
inside. When bereft of its natural food, his inside ceased to function, and the
more he studied it, the more empty and foolish it seemed to him to be. All the
exquisite apparatus by which the delicious transformation had hitherto been
made stood still, and he was at a loss to guess what it was capable of doing.
This second sausage machine was like the man who has lost his zest, while
the first was like the man who has retained it. The mind is a strange machine
which can combine the materials offered to it in the most astonishing ways,
but without materials from the external world it is powerless, and unlike the
sausage machine it must seize its materials for itself, since events only
become experiences through the interest that we take in them: if they do not
interest us, we are making nothing of them. The man, therefore, whose
attention is turned within finds nothing worthy of his notice, whereas the
man whose attention is turned outward can find within, in those rare
moments when he examines his soul, the most varied and interesting
assortment of ingredients being dissected and recombined into beautiful or
instructive patterns."
The Conquest of Happiness
"If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon. But Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I dare say, envied Hercules, who never existed.” - Bertrand Russell"
