Fun-- every kind of fun

"One feels," he said slowly, as we stood looking down, a few minutes later, at that small face, which sleep had transfigured into the image of an unearthly serenity, "one feels so desperately sorry for them. They don't know what they're in for. Seventy years of ambushes and betrayals, of booby traps and deceptions."
"And of fun," I put in. "Fun to the pitch, sometimes, of ecstasy."
"Of course," Rivers agreed, as he turned away from the crib. "That's what baits the booby traps." He switched off the light, softly closed the door and followed me down the stairs. "Fun-- every kind of fun. Sex fun, eating fun, power fun, comfort fun, possession fun, cruelty fun. But there's either a hook in the bait, or else when you grab it, it pulls a trigger and down come the bricks or the bucket of bird lime or whatever it is that the cosmic joker has prepared for you." We resumed our seats on either side of the fire in the library. "What sort of traps are waiting for that poor little shining creature up there in the crib? One can hardly bear to think of it. The only comfort is that there's ignorance before the event and, after it, forgetting, or at the very least indifference. Every balcony scene turns into an affair of midgets in another universe! And in the end, of course, there's always death. And while there is death, there is hope."
HUXLEY, Aldous
The Genius and the Goddess (1955)