It really offended me that he should believe himself the unluckiest man in the world....Natural law does not entitle us to happiness, but rather it prescribes wretchedness and sorrow. When something is edible is left exposed, from all directions parasites come running, and if there are no parasites, they are quickly generated. Soon the prey is barely sufficient, and immediately afterwards it no longer suffices at all, for nature doesn't do sums, she experiments. When food no longer suffices, then consumers must diminish through death preceded by pain; thus equilibrium, for a moment, is reestablished. Why complain? And yet everyone does complain.
--From The Conscience of Zeno, by Italo Svevo (1861-1928 [pseudonym of Ettore Schmitz], translated wonderfully by William Weaver (b 1923).
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