"[Nature] only keeps us alive by a complicated system of the most shameful illusions, falsifying beyond rectification life, death, and after-death. Having made us take part in this poor puzzling game of life, she has taken care that all the rules shall be unfavourable to us: the cards are marked, the dice are loaded, we are always swindled. Thus years of hard work; and self-denial are frequently lost by a slip or chance, but seldom or never saved by a chance. Our health may be ruined by a pin-prick, but never doubled by an accident. We fall seriously ill in a moment, and take weeks or months to recover; lose a limb by some sudden mishap, but never by a good hap regain it. We cannot reach even a low degree of wisdom or knowledge without long hard study, while to be ignorant and foolish is the easiest and most natural thing in the world for us. Our sorrows are real and enduring; our joys deceptive and transient; our prizes of victory are not to be compared with our forfeits of defeat."
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AtheistsCritics from the United KingdomTranslators from ScotlandEssayists from ScotlandPeople from Glasgow
Original Language: English
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"The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery", part II, p. 62
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Thomson_(poet%2C_born_1834)
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James Thomson (poet, born 1834)
James Thomson (23 November 1834 – 3 June 1882) was a Scottish poet and essayist, best known for his The City of Dreadful Night. His pseudonyms B.V. and Bysshe Vanolis were chosen in tribute to Percy Bysshe Shelley and Novalis.
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