“The necessity of knowing a little about a great many things is the most grievous burden of our day. It deprives us of leisure on the one hand, and of scholarship on the other.”

“A prosperous fool is a grievous burden.”

Aeschylus (-525–-456 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

“Wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.”

Abigail Adams (1744–1818) 2nd First Lady of the United States (1797–1801)

“A cloudy day or a little sunshine have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most real blessings or misfortunes.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

“I do see one large and grievous kind of ignorance, separate from the rest, and as weighty as all the other parts put together. Thinking that one knows a thing when one does not know it. Through this, I believe, all the mistakes of the mind are caused in all of us.”

Plato book Sophist

“Is it knowledge that is wanting? We Indians, born and bred in a country where Jnana has been stored and accumulated since the race began, bear about in us the inherited gains of many thousands of years…. But it is a dead knowledge, a burden under which we are bowed, a poison which is corroding us, rather than as it should be a staff to support our feet and a weapon in our hands; for this is the nature of all great things that when they are not used or are ill used, they turn upon the bearer and destroy him.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

“The days were long and lonely. The sudden and total deprivation of such basic human necessities as exercise and fresh air, association with other people, my own clothes and things like newspapers, radio, cigarettes books and a host of other things, made my life very hard.”

Bobby Sands (1954–1981) Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army

“All in the golden afternoon
Full leisurely we glide;
For both our oars, with little skill,
By little arms are plied,
While little hands make vain pretence
Our wanderings to guide.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

“But he had hardly felt the absurdity of those things, on the one hand, and the necessity of those others, on the other (for it is rare that the feeling of absurdity is not followed by the feeling of necessity), when he felt the absurdity of those things of which he had just felt the necessity (for it is rare that the feeling of necessity is not followed by the feeling of absurdity).”

Samuel Beckett book Watt

“Absurdity is one of the most human things about us: a manifestation of our most advanced and interesting characteristics.”

Thomas Nagel (1937) American philosopher