“That is why education seems, to me, so important: it actualizes that potentiality for leisure—if you like, for amateurishness, which is man’s prerogative. You have noticed, I hope, that man is the only amateur animal. All the others are professionals. They have no leisure and do not desire it. When the cow has finished eating, she chews the cud. When she has finished chewing, she sleeps. When she has finished sleeping, she eats again. She is a machine for turning grass into calves and milk—in other words, for producing more cows. The lion cannot stop hunting nor the beaver building dams nor the bee making honey. When God made the beasts dumb, He saved the world from infinite boredom for, if they could speak, they would, all of them, all day, talk nothing but shop.”
C.S. Lewis, “Our English Syllabus” (courtesy of Richard Zuelch)