Le problème de la responsibilité n’aurait de sens que si on nous avait consulté avant notre naissance et que nous eussions consenti à être précisément celui que nous sommes.

–Emil Cioran, De l’inconvénient d’être né

This is the thought I keep in mind whenever anyone tries to shame me about anything.

A cardinal objection to utilitarianism as a moral theory has been that it is an inhuman theory, making upon us inhuman demands or requiring of us inhuman acts. Much of the work of utilitarian moral theorists has been an attempt to rebut this charge but, alas, the objection is largely sound and therefore such work is futile.

It is a pity that no utilitarian has had the courage to insist “Yes, my theory is inhuman. But it is humanity, not the theory, that is the problem…”

You are unhappy because of your overweening sense of entitlement.

I am unhappy because I am unjustly oppressed.

Glad to have that cleared up.

Tous les jours on couche avec des femmes qu’on n’aime pas, et l’on ne couche pas avec des femmes qu’on aime.

–“Le maître” in Denis Diderot’s Jacques le fataliste et son maître

True. And every working day I pull myself out of bed to spend the day doing what I do not love, and not doing what I do love.