Shall here a thousand volumes teach me only
That men, self-tortured, everywhere must bleed -
And here and there one happy man sits lonely.
- Faust, Goethe
I love the book Faust, though my intelligence (or the lack of intelligence) did not allow me to grasp everything that I read in it (it is a very deep book anyway). This excerpt says the more we learn, the more we only understand that the less understanding we have and the farther and farther from happiness we go, even though ironically, this flight for learning started for the want of happiness. But here and there, sits a man alone, happy. Does this mean happiness is achieved in isolation? Or does it mean a happy man is hard to come by? And what makes him happy? The fact that he is lonely? Or that he is sitting and not running after the wind?