Inspiring Quotes from Book “The Consolations of Philosophy”

The Polaris in the technological society

Shrek has been working for a tech company for a few years. He is hard-working, self-motivated, and focused. But he still has lots of confusion about goals and reality, frustrations and pleasures, reason and instincts, sufferings and fruitfulness. Therefore he starts looking for answers in philosophy. What did philosophers think? Is philosophy still Polaris in the technological society?

He opened a book by Allan de Botton “The Consolations of Philosophy”.

photo by author

Top 5 favorite quotes from the book

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If you wish to draw pleasure out of life, you must attach value to the world.

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In the course of his own life and in its misfortunes, he will look less at his own individual lot than at the lot of mankind as a whole, and accordingly will conduct himself … more as a knower than as a sufferer.
We must, between periods of digging in the dark, endeavor always to transform our tears into knowledge.

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How badly we react to frustration is critically determined by what we think of as normal. We may be frustrated that it is raining, but our familiarity with showers means we are unlikely ever to respond to one with anger. Our frustrations are tempered by what we understand we can expect from the world, by our experience of what it is normal to hope for.

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We don’t exist unless there is someone who can see us existing, what we say has no meaning until someone can understand, while to be surrounded by friends is constantly to have our identity confirmed; their knowledge and care for us have the power to pull us from our numbness.

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All of them had that diligent seriousness of a craftsman, learning first to construct the parts properly before daring to make a great whole. They allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole.

Inspiring quotes that moved me

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“Every society has notions of what one should believe and how one should behave…