哲學家笑銀行家：「你不知道生命的意義。」
銀行家笑哲學家：「思考深奧的問題無非是藉口，因為你貧窮，所以你被迫思考，而你知道你思考過後這個世界亦不能被你改變。你只是一個失敗者。」
人生中有太多重要的問題，人們該回答卻又不回答。是拙於思考，或是源於對真相的無法接受，或是他們不需要思考。
什麼時候要工作，什麼時候該休息？到底我們成熟了，還是仍然幼稚？要保留自我，還是附和同意？什麼時候是別人愚昧，什麼時候是我自己無知？我們有貢獻過社會，或只是寄生蟲？愛情是水月鏡花，還是真切的確切的？隨波逐流，不如追逐夢想？婚姻雖好，但是不相愛的話那一紙婚書還有用嗎？讀書好是否一定會有美滿的人生？
最難的不是應付工作，應酬朋友，而是應付生活。困苦和寂寞的確是人生的本質，若看透了一切，人生的本質竟然是如此疏離和平淡。生一人，死一人。最後無論如何，也得自己一個。
WHEN I am in a serious humour, I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey; where the gloominess of the place, and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable.
I yesterday passed a whole afternoon in the churchyard, the cloisters, and the church, amusing myself with the tombstones and inscriptions that I met with in those several regions of the dead. Most of them recorded nothing else of the buried person, but that he was born upon one day, and died upon another: the whole history of his life being comprehended in those two circumstances, that are common to all mankind.
I could not but look upon these registers of existence, whether of brass or marble, as a kind of satire upon the departed persons; who bad left no other memorial of them, but that they were born and that they died. The life of these men is finely described in holy writ by "the path of an arrow," which is immediately closed up and lost.
Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a grave; and saw in every shovelful of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull intermixt with a kind of fresh mouldering earth, that some time or other had a place in the composition of a human body.
Upon this I began to consider with myself what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together under the pavement of that ancient cathedral; how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were crumbled amongst one another, and blended together in the same common mass; how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, weakness, and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter.
Joseph Edison 的確看得很透，最後的一句他這樣說：「無論甚麼人，美貌的、有權勢的、年輕的，還是年老的，衰弱的、畸形的，都將毫無區分地躺在同一堆亂糟糟的泥中。」
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