Thursday 23 May 2024

THE DANGER IN OUR VIRTUES

'When we're young, so much time is spent keeping our vices in check. Our anger, our envy, our pride. But when I look around, it seems to me that so many of our lives end up being hampered by a virtue instead. If you take a trait that by all appearances is a merit - a trait that is praised by pastors and poets, a trait that we have come to admire in our friends and hope to foster in our children - and you give it to some poor soul in abundance, it will almost certainly prove an obstacle to their happiness.'
Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway, p.495.