“Actually, I have for a long time been of opinion that the quantity of noise anyone can comfortably endure is in inverse proportion to his mental powers, and may therefore be regarded as a rough estimate of them. Therefore, when I hear dogs barking unchecked for hours in the courtyard of a house, I know what to think of the mental powers of the inhabitants. The man who habitually slams doors instead of shutting them with the hand, or allows this to be done in his house, is not merely ill-mannered, but also coarse and narrow-minded. … We shall be quite civilized only when our ears are no longer outlawed, and it is no longer anyone's right to cut through the consciousness of every thinking being within a circuit of a thousand yards, by means of whistling, howling, bellowing, hammering, whip-cracking, letting dogs bark, and so on.”

Ok, Schopenhauer, this feels oddly specific.