Workers were occupied with the ancient task of trying to stay alive, which simply happened to require, in a… — Alain de Botton
Workers were occupied with the ancient task of trying to stay alive, which simply happened to require, in a consumer economy overwhelmingly based on the satisfaction of peripheral desires, a series of activities all to easily confused with clownishness.
p. 97Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
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To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one’s ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.
p. 237
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.
p. 113
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.
p. 168
