Well, I'm having a good time. Which makes me feel guilty too. How very English.
Interpretation
The speaker enjoys a moment but feels guilty about that joy, reflecting a common English sensibility.
This quote by David Attenborough encapsulates the often paradoxical nature of human emotions where one can feel joy while simultaneously experiencing guilt. It showcases a uniquely English tradition of self-reflection and irony, suggesting that enjoyment may be accompanied by feelings of guilt due to social or cultural expectations.
In practice
In a speech about finding joy in difficult times, you could use this quote to illustrate the complexity of human feelings.
I don't think we are going to become extinct. We're very clever and extremely resourceful - and we will find ways of preserving ourselves, of that I'm sure. But whether our lives will be as rich as they are now is another question.
I'm against this huge globalisation on the basis of economic advantage.
I would be absolutely astounded if population growth and industrialisation and all the stuff we are pumping into the atmosphere hadn't changed the climatic balance. Of course it has. There is no valid argument for denial.
There's a small worm called Loa Loa Filariasis. This parasite can survive in one environment exclusively- namely, underneath the skin and inside the eyes of human beings. Children and the elderly in tropical regions (usually the poorest) are the most widely affected. A painful, slow death is virtually certain. The worm can actually live in the host for 17 years before the host finally dies.
The fundamental issue is the moral issue.
It is vital that there is a narrator figure whom people believe. That's why I never do commercials. If I started saying that margarine was the same as motherhood, people would think I was a liar.
Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say it makes him more pleasing to others.
Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain.
I'm like a backward berry, Unripened on the vine, For all my friends are fifty, And I'm only forty-nine.
I kind of keep my personality in my pocket a lot. When I start to do stand-up, that's not my true personality either. It's the personality of a guy who hasn't been able to say what he wanted to say.
The other day I met a man who didn't know where Tripoli was. Tripoli happened to come into the conversation, and he was evidently at a loss. "Let's see," he said. "Tripoli is just down by the - er - you know. What's the name of that place?" "That's right," I answered, "just opposite, Thingumabob. I could show you in a minute on a map. It's near - what do they call it?" At this moment the train stopped, and I got out and went straight home to look at my atlas.
There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you 'play' with them!
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