The core — and perhaps unexpected — thing that books do for us is simplify. It sounds odd, because we think of literature as sophisticated. But there are powerful ways in which books organise, and clarify our concerns — and in this sense simplify.

Alain De Botton
Some Similar Quotes
  1. A half-read book is a half-finished love affair. - David Mitchell

  2. The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  3. It starts so young, and I'm angry about that. The garbage we're taught. About love, about what's "romantic." Look at so many of the so-called romantic figures in books and movies. Do we ever stop and think how many of them would cause serious and... - Deb Caletti

  4. I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men."" Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes,... - Jane Austen

  5. Someone once wrote that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with you. - E. Lockhart

More Quotes By Alain De Botton
  1. One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.

  2. There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.

  3. There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.

  4. The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.

  5. The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be.

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