Oblomov

[alice wellintown]

It is of course justifiable for the man that draws up
reports, adds up figures, answers business letters, follows
the movement of the stock exchange, to feel an agreeable
sense of superiority when he says to you with a sneer: "It's
all very well for you; you have nothing better to do." But
he would be no less contemptuous, would be even more
so….were your recreation writing Hamlet or Merely reading
it. Wherein busy men show a lack of forethought. For the
disinterested culture which seems to them a comic pastime of
idle people when they find them engaged in it is, they ought
to reflect, the same as that which, in their own profession,
brings to the fore men who may not be better judges or
administrators then themselves but before whose rapid
advancement they bow their heads, saying, "it appears he's
extremely well read, a most distinguished individual."

			Marcel Proust    A la recherche du temps perdu