He had known about the general prosperity that had bloomed continuously, like the flower of some giant and impossibly hardy weed, for the forty years since the end of World War II, and he had known how this wealth had been distributed among and spent by the nearly all-inclusive middle class that, as every year passed, put more time into less productive work and made more money for it.

Walter Tevis, The Man Who Fell to Earth [Amazon, Local Library]

Hermetic quote Tevis The Man Who Fell Earth known general prosperity since end war wealth distributed spent middle class every year more time less productive work more money

Consider also:

  1. “The books he read as a scholar, full of the wisdom of the ancients, must have been balanced in his mind by the questions left unanswered and the treatises never written. His own library of parchment and paper was grounded by his imaginary library of forgotten or neglected subjects of study and reflection.”
  2. How Not to Play Chess
  3. “Language was made for men to eat and drink, make love, do barter, die.”
  4. Greater Feast of Miguel de Molinos
  5. “Thus the Loves of Abelard and of Heloise were destroyed by the System of Repression in which they chanced to move. Thus Beatrice was robbed of Dante by social Artificialities; and Paolo slain on account of Things external to his Love of Francesca.”