Business is always interfering with pleasure - but it makes other pleasures possible.

William Feather (1889–1981) was an American publisher and widely syndicated columnist known for compact, pragmatic aphorisms about work, money, and everyday conduct. The sentiment fits the persona he cultivated in his “Featherisms” and related business-minded reflections: a middle-class, early-to-mid-20th-century American outlook that treats commerce and duty as unavoidable constraints, yet also as the enabling condition for comfort and leisure. While the line is often circulated as a standalone maxim, it reflects Feather’s recurring theme that modern life requires balancing obligation with enjoyment rather than imagining they can be cleanly separated.

The quote acknowledges a common complaint—work and practical responsibilities interrupt leisure—then reframes it as a trade-off rather than a tragedy. “Business” represents not only employment but the whole apparatus of earning, planning, and maintaining one’s life. Feather’s twist is that the very thing that steals time from pleasure also finances and sustains it: travel, hobbies, security, and the freedom to choose how to spend nonworking hours. The line therefore argues for a mature, economic realism: pleasure is not simply opposed to work but is often produced by it, making balance and perspective more sensible than resentment.