Bokelskere.no

And so, in private life, Nature works in a way which is considered the highest expression of Art in works of genius: its method of operation is self-interest, whose motive power is money.

[ . . . ] New York, a place where speculation and individualism are carried to the very highest level, where the brutality of self-interest reaches the point of cynicism and where a man, fundamentally isolated from the rest of mankind, finds himself compelled to rely upon his own strength and at every instant to be the self-appointed judge of his own actions, a city in which politeness does not exist. (Balzacs beskrivelse fra 1819).

The passion for lotteries, so universally condemned, has never been studied. No one has realized it was the opium of poverty.