Early Retirement

My father used to tell the story of a tutor at his university, a Viennese professor of something or other. There was a general conversation about what people would have, if they could have anything in the world. There were some surprising answers—a youngish woman don said she wanted an enormous wine cellar. When it came to the old Viennese, he sucked his pipe for a moment, and then said, ‘Vell, if I could really have anything I wanted, anything at all, I think I would choose...permanent delusions of grandeur.’