42 : deep thought on life, the universe and everything

195 Pages·2008·1.393 MB·English

by  Mark Vernon

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42
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42
Deep Thought on Life
Mark Vernon
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A Oneworld Book
Published by Oneworld Publications 2008
Copyright © Mark Vernon 2008
All rights reserved
Copyright under Berne Convention
A CIP record for this title is available
from the British Library
ISBN: 978–1–85168–560–8
Typeset by Jayvee, Trivandrum, India
Cover design by XXX
Printed and bound by XXX
Oneworld Publications
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Oxford OX2 7AR
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www.oneworld-publications.com
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In memory of Richard Butler, who for some time edited
The Referee, a newspaper with the inspiring strapline,
‘The paper that makes you think’.
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Contents
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction xv
THE HAPPY LIFE
1. ‘Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be
so.’ 3
John Stuart Mill
2. ‘All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of
their defects.’ 9
Aldous Huxley
3. ‘Where ignorance is bliss, ‘Tis folly to be wise.’ 11
Thomas Gray
4. ‘Things can only get better.’ 17
Political slogan
5 ‘Man’s unhappiness springs from one thing alone,
his incapacity to stay quietly in one room.’ 21
Blaise Pascal
6. ‘The thinker philosophises as the lover does.’ 25
William James
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42: Deep Thought on Life
THE EVERYDAY LIFE
7. ‘As for sex, it is the rubbing together of pieces of
gut, followed by the spasmodic secretion of a
little bit of slime.’ 31
Marcus Aurelius
8. ‘Photography is truth. Cinema is truth at
twenty-four times per second.’ 37
Jean-Luc Godard
9. ‘The innocent sleep.’ 39
Macbeth
10. ‘They say travel broadens the mind; but you must
have the mind.’ 41
G. K. Chesterton
11. ‘Grub first, then ethics.’ 45
Bertolt Brecht
12. ‘We do not look in great cities for our best morality.’ 49
Jane Austen
13. ‘One cat always leads to another.’ 53
Ernest Hemingway
14. ‘Haste is universal because everyone is in flight
from themselves.’ 57
Nietzsche
THE WORKING LIFE
15. ‘Let’s go to work.’ 63
From Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs
16. ‘Freedom and slavery are mental states.’ 67
Gandhi
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Contents
17. ‘Money can’t buy you happiness but it does buy a more
pleasant form of misery.’ 69
Spike Milligan
18. ‘You must want nothing if you wish to challenge Jupiter,
who himself wants nothing.’ 71
Seneca
19. ‘The soul is the prison of the body.’ 73
Michel Foucault
THE SOCIAL LIFE
20. ‘The desire for friendship comes quickly. Friendship does
not.’ 79
Aristotle
21. ‘Never do to others what you would not like them to do to
you.’ 83
Confucius
22. ‘A gift is something that you cannot be thankful for.’ 87
Jacques Derrida
23. ‘Our friend’s electric!’ 91
After the title of a Gary Numan song
24. ‘Love is blind.’ 93
Anon
THE GREENER LIFE
25. ‘God Almighty first planted a garden.’ 97
Francis Bacon
26. ‘Growth for the sake of growth is the philosophy of the
cancer cell.’ 101
Edward Abbey