The phrase “quiet desperation” has always appealed to me. It crops up twice in Pink Floyd lyrics. I always assumed that Roger Waters came up with it and was so pleased with himself that he used it again.
Today I came across the phrase in the book The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart, and from the the context it looked like the author was knowingly quoting from a source he expected at least some of his readers to be familiar with. I thought it might be a nod to Pink Floyd but then spotted that the book was first published in 1971, well before Dark Side of the Moon where Floyd used it the first time.
So I did a bit of searching and find that the phrase is from a rather famous quote from Henry Thoreau’s Walden – “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
Yet another gap in my knowledge highlighted. I think its about time I got round to reading Walden.
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