Listen, three eyes," he said, "don't you try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.
Douglas AdamsRead
No one really knows what mattresses are meant to gain from their lives either. They are large, friendly, pocket-sprung creatures that live quiet private lives in the marshes of Sqornshellous Zeta. Many of them get caught, slaughtered, dried out, shipped out and slept on. None of them seems to mind this and all of them are called Zem.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote humorously reflects on the existential musings of inanimate objects, suggesting they experience life in their own way.
In this quote by Douglas Adams, the author personifies mattresses, presenting them as sentient beings with their own quiet lives. This whimsical take serves to highlight the absurdity of human concerns about purpose and existence, meanwhile suggesting that even mundane objects might have their own version of existence and acceptance of fate.
Themes
MattressesLifeExistenceHumorPersonification
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can serve as an icebreaker during a light-hearted discussion on life’s purpose.
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All quotes →"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?" "Ask a glass of water."
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Protect me from knowing what I don't need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don't know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen. [...] Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer.
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Computers are still technology because we are still wrestling with it: it's still being invented; we're still trying to work out how it works. There's a world of game interaction to come that you or I wouldn't recognise. It's time for the machines to disappear. The computer's got to disappear into all of the things we use.
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What the computer in virtual reality enables us to do is to recalibrate ourselves so that we can start seeing those pieces of information that are invisible to us but have become important for us to understand.
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We are stuck with technology when all we really want is just stuff that works. How do you recognize something that is still technology? A good clue is if it comes with a manual.
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