"Business is always interfering with pleasure - but it makes other pleasures possible"
About this Quote
Business is the necessary buzzkill William Feather refuses to romanticize, even as he admits it pays for the good parts. The line pivots on a familiar irritation - work ruins the fun - then flips it into a cooler, more grown-up bargain: the same obligations that steal your evening also bankroll your vacation, your leisure, your options. That dash is doing real work, staging business as both thief and enabler in one breath, a compact portrait of modern life where time and money constantly trade places.
Feather wrote in a period when American identity was tightening around productivity: the early 20th century’s expanding corporate culture, the moral prestige of “being busy,” the post-Depression insistence that stability is earned. His framing sidesteps both martyrdom and hedonism. Pleasure isn’t condemned as frivolous; it’s treated as something you can legitimately want. Business isn’t sacred; it’s intrusive, almost rude. The subtext is a critique of the way work colonizes experience, while still acknowledging that material systems are what make “free time” more than a fantasy.
The quote also works as a quiet corrective to two extremes: the hustle gospel that pretends work is its own reward, and the escapist fantasy that pleasure is pure if it’s detached from cost. Feather’s realism lands because it doesn’t ask you to love business. It asks you to recognize the transaction, then choose your pleasures with that knowledge - not guilt, not denial, just the math of a life.
Feather wrote in a period when American identity was tightening around productivity: the early 20th century’s expanding corporate culture, the moral prestige of “being busy,” the post-Depression insistence that stability is earned. His framing sidesteps both martyrdom and hedonism. Pleasure isn’t condemned as frivolous; it’s treated as something you can legitimately want. Business isn’t sacred; it’s intrusive, almost rude. The subtext is a critique of the way work colonizes experience, while still acknowledging that material systems are what make “free time” more than a fantasy.
The quote also works as a quiet corrective to two extremes: the hustle gospel that pretends work is its own reward, and the escapist fantasy that pleasure is pure if it’s detached from cost. Feather’s realism lands because it doesn’t ask you to love business. It asks you to recognize the transaction, then choose your pleasures with that knowledge - not guilt, not denial, just the math of a life.
Quote Details
| Topic | Business |
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