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Quote#Work

Have misfortune and disease and frustration and insecurity been…

Quote byE. V. Lucas · 1868–1938

Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Over Bemerton's (1908), ch. 23, p. 237.

English (original)

Have misfortune and disease and frustration and insecurity been necessary to man's ingenuity and industry? Without sorrow should we have had no telegraph? without tears, no camera? Have all the benefits of civilisation been wrung from us in some effort to escape from the blows of fate? And even if so, might not happiness, without the advantages of progress, have still been better?

— E. V. Lucas

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