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A profound and, I think, true – but not particularly uplifting – thought for the day today courtesy of Papa:

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

From what I think might be an underappreciated and understudied Hemingway novel: The Garden of Evil. I know one person who I love very much who I think might be just too smart and wise to be happy. These words ring true. But hopefully also, intelligence can help us map a path through this quite depressing world we inhabit, towards happiness despite it all. That’s one of the things I really enjoyed about Derrick Jensen: his ability to show us how f*ed up everything is, and still find things to smile at.

Of course, these words about a dearth of happiness sound especially poignant coming from a man who ended his own life with a shotgun. Or maybe we’re thinking too hard; he put this line into the mouth of a character rather than his own…

What do you think?

Filed under: hemingWay of the Day | Tagged: authors, Hemingway |