Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
Alain de BottonMost of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
Alain de BottonOne kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?
Alain de BottonPolitics is so difficult, it's generally only people who aren't quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.
Alain de BottonIt looks like itโs wasting time, but literature is actually the ultimate time-saver - because it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you years, decades, millennia to try to experience directly. Literature is the greatest reality simulator - a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.
Alain de BottonAt the beginning of human history, as we struggled to light fires and to chisel fallen trees into rudimentary canoes, who could have predicted that long after we had managed to send men to the moon and areoplanes to Australasia, we would still have such trouble knowing how to tolerate ourselves, forgive our loved ones, and apologise for our tantrums?
Alain de Botton