{ "type": "quote", "site": { "name": "Leafy Quotes", "language": "en", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com" }, "formats": "Every page has two versions with the same data: JSON (the page address + .json) and markdown (the page address + .md). Append .json or .md to any `url` in this document.", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-pleasures-and-sorrows-of-work/the-start-of-work", "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-pleasures-and-sorrows-of-work/the-start-of-work.json", "markdown": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-pleasures-and-sorrows-of-work/the-start-of-work.md", "id": "b6896345-af73-4624-ac41-78f0fdc29e2c", "slug": "the-start-of-work", "text": "The start of work means the end to freedom, but also to doubt, intensity and wayward desires. The accountant’s ten thousand possibilities have been reduced to an agreeable handful. She has a business card which she hands over in meetings and which tells other people—and, more meaningfully perhaps, reminds her—that she is a Business Unit Senior manager, rather than a vaporous transient consciousness in an incidental universe. How satisfying it is to be held in check by the assumptions of colleagues, instead of being forced to contemplate, in the loneliness of the early hours, all that one might have been and now never will be. … Life is no longer mysterious, sad, haunting, touching, confusing or melancholy; it is a practical stage for clear-eyed action.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Alain de Botton", "slug": "alain-de-botton", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton" }, "book": { "title": "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work", "slug": "the-pleasures-and-sorrows-of-work", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-pleasures-and-sorrows-of-work" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 238, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "work", "slug": "work", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/work" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alain_de_Botton#The_Pleasures_and_Sorrows_of_Work_(2009)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:58:08", "more_from_book": [ { "id": "efeb6e57-6449-4b8b-ac91-939f66aba694", "slug": "symons-remarked-that", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-pleasures-and-sorrows-of-work/symons-remarked-that", "text": "Symons … remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him was the idea that they ought somehow, in the normal course of events, to have intuited—long before they had finished their degrees, started families, bought houses and risen to the top of law firms—what they should properly be doing with their lives. They were tormented by a residual notion of having through some error or stupidity on their part missed out on their true calling.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 113, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "work", "slug": "work", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/work" }, { "name": "vocation", "slug": "vocation", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/vocation" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alain_de_Botton#The_Pleasures_and_Sorrows_of_Work_(2009)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:58:08" }, { "id": "ef376557-bcec-454a-89ca-809e9b98e349", "slug": "the-pre-scientific-age", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-pleasures-and-sorrows-of-work/the-pre-scientific-age", "text": "The pre-scientific age, whatever its deficiencies, had at least offered its members the peace of mind that follows from knowing all man-made achievements to be nothing next to the grandeur of the universe. We, more blessed in our gadgetry but less humble in our outlook, have been left … having no more compelling repository of veneration than our brilliant, precise, blinkered and morally troubling fellow human beings.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 168, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "technology", "slug": "technology", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/technology" }, { "name": "humility", "slug": "humility", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humility" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alain_de_Botton#The_Pleasures_and_Sorrows_of_Work_(2009)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:58:08" }, { "id": "d8e0d846-7c17-4485-ba21-3c776893ec30", "slug": "most-of-us-stand", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-pleasures-and-sorrows-of-work/most-of-us-stand", "text": "Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or bicycle.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": 127, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "perfectionism", "slug": "perfectionism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/perfectionism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alain_de_Botton#The_Pleasures_and_Sorrows_of_Work_(2009)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:58:08" } ] }