What a miserable thing life is: you're in clover; only the clover isn't good enough.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the dissatisfaction with life's pleasures, even when they seem abundant.
Bertolt Brecht's quote suggests that despite having seemingly good circumstances ('in clover'), there is often a sense of dissatisfaction or longing for something better. It speaks to the human condition where even in times of plenty, we may still find ourselves unhappy or unfulfilled because our expectations and desires are not met. This quote encourages reflection on the nature of contentment and the tendency to overlook the good in our lives in pursuit of an ideal that remains just out of reach.
In practice
In a discussion about life dissatisfaction during a philosophy class.
The shrill voices of those who give orders Are full of fear like the squeakings of Piglets awaiting the butcher's knife, as their fat arses Sweat with anxiety in their office chairs.... Fear rules not only those who are ruled, but The rulers too.
We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself.
We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it's all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It's the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians.
War is like love, it always finds a way.
Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.
Recently my fingers have developed a prejudice against comparatives. They all follow this pattern: a squirrel is smaller than a tree; a bird is more musical than a tree. Each of us is the strongest one in his or her own skin. Characteristics should take off their hats to one another, instead of spitting in each other's faces.
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.
There must be right and wrong answers to questions of morality and values that potentially fall within the purview of science. On this view, some people and cultures will be right (to a greater or lesser degree), and some will be wrong, with respect to what they deem important in life.
In fighting terror, you cannot let it interfere with the normal life of civilians in Israel.
If you do not think well of Him because His qualities are beautiful then think well of Him because of the way He treats you.
The only routine with me is no routine at all.
We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.
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