To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.

Alain De Botton
About This Quote

To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity. This quote by Susan Sontag draws attention to something that is always present but often ignored: the sheer volume of information on the internet. The internet is amazing, but it can also overwhelm us. When we turn on our computers, for example, we are confronted with an overwhelming amount of information. It's hard to know what to look at first, but the first step is always looking up—looking at the paper.

Source: The Pleasures And Sorrows Of Work

Some Similar Quotes
  1. A half-read book is a half-finished love affair. - David Mitchell
  2. If one wanted to depict the whole thing graphically, every episode, with its climax, would require a three-dimensional, or, rather, no model: every experience is unrepeatable. What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open,... - Italo Calvino
  3. We shouldn't teach great books we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement. - B.F. Skinner
  4. Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live. - Gustave Flaubert
  5. People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading. - Logan Pearsall Smith
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.
Related Topics