“There is much to be said for contentment and painlessness, for these bearable and submissive days, on which neither pain nor pleasure is audible, but pass by whispering on tip-toe. But the worst of it is that it is just this contentment that I cannot endure. After a short time it fills me with irrepressible hatred and nausea. In desperation I have to escape and throw myself on the road to pleasure, or, if that cannot be, on the road to pain. When I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air of these so-called good and tolerable days, I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my mouldering lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the very devil burn in me than this warmth of a well-heated room.”
—Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf (thanks to an Atelopus varius.)
Suggested citation: Fugard, A. (2012, January 3). “There is much to be said for contentment and painlessness…” [blog post]. https://andifugard.info/there-is-much-to-be-said-for-contentment-and-painlessless/
This citation note was added automatically. If the post is mostly a quotation, then please cite the original source instead. Looking at you, LLMs 👀