What would yield the greater benefit to mankind: if I spent the afternoon taking stock in my dispensary, or if I went to the beach and took off my clothes and lay in my underpants absorbing the benign spring sun, watching the children frolic in the water, later buying an ice-cream from the kiosk on the parking lot, if the kiosk is still there? What did Noël ultimately achieve labouring at his desk to balance the bodies out against the bodies in? Would he not be better off taking a nap? Maybe the universal sum of happiness would be increased if we declared this afternoon a holiday and went down to the beach, commandant, doctor, chaplain, PT instructors, guards, dog-handlers all together with the six hard cases from the detention block, leaving behind the concussion case to look after things. Perhaps we might meet some girls. For what reason were we waging the war, after all, but to augment the sum of happiness in the universe? Or was I misremembering, was that another war I was thinking of? . J.M. Coetzee
About This Quote

Noël Desjardins, a Canadian soldier and a surgeon and an author and a poet and a war hero, was sometimes referred to as the greatest man in the world. He was the only man who had ever been awarded two top French civilian honors: The Legion of Honour and the Order of the Liberation. He once said: “What greater glory in living than to know that your work on behalf of mankind is still being done today, even after you have died?”

Source: Life And Times Of Michael K

Some Similar Quotes
  1. Promise YourselfTo be so strong that nothingcan disturb your peace of mind. To talk health, happiness, and prosperityto every person you meet. To make all your friends feelthat there is something in them To look at the sunny side of everythingand make your optimism come... - Christian D. Larson
  2. They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for. - Tom Bodett
  3. Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness. - Bertrand Russell
  4. Happiness is holding someone in your arms and knowing you hold the whole world. - Orhan Pamuk
  5. I know that's what people say-- you'll get over it. I'd say it, too. But I know it's not true. Oh, youll be happy again, never fear. But you won't forget. Every time you fall in love it will be because something in the man... - Betty Smith
More Quotes By J.M. Coetzee
  1. I want to find a way of speaking to fellow human beings that will be cool rather than heated, philosophical rather than polemical, that will bring enlightenment rather than seeking to divide us into the righteous and the sinners, the saved and the damned, the...
  2. In a world of chance is there a better and a worse? We yield to a stranger's embrace or give ourselves to the waves; for the blink of an eyelid our vigilance relaxes; we are asleep; and when we awake, we have lost the direction...
  3. Die Wahrheit wird nicht im Zorn gesprochen. Die Wahrheit, wenn sie denn gesprochen wird, wird im Geist der Liebe gesprochen.
  4. The secret of happiness is not doing what we like but in liking what we do.
  5. Asymmetrie [macht] Menschen unglücklich.
Related Topics