You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
This appetite to choose death by pleasure if it is available to choose - this appetite of your people unable to choose appetites, this is the death.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that choosing pleasure over meaning can be a path to a metaphorical death.
David Foster Wallace highlights a deep concern about the human tendency to prioritize immediate pleasure over more profound, meaningful choices. He suggests that when people are unable to choose what to desire—and merely submit to the pursuit of pleasure—they risk losing their sense of purpose and, ultimately, themselves. This reflection on the consequences of our appetites serves as a cautionary tale about the emptiness that can arise when we seek only gratification without deeper consideration.
Themes
PleasureDeathChoiceMeaningAppetite
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the search for happiness, this quote can illustrate the dangers of hedonism.
More from David Foster Wallace
All quotes →Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.
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It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.
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Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel.
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Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
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Bliss - a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious - lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.
David Foster WallaceRead
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