Irony

"Learn from me...how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow." -page 31

This quote is very ironic. Who would think that knowledge leads to unhappiness? Although then again there is the old saying (although maybe not older than this book) that ignorance is bliss. This also advocates not knowing the true realm of the world. It instead promotes simply knowing your own town to be the world. Interesting. In this time period it would have been much easier to be like this though. Not knowing the whole world is tough in today's world. I feel like Americans shut out the rest of the wold better than everyone else. Well or worse than everyone else depending on which way you look at it. We tend to focus on affairs here at home and we are a fairly happy nation so maybe there is some truth to this idea.