Emily D

“Such intimate communion between our own life and the novels we read may be why Proust argued: "In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. the writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have experienced in himself. And the recognition by the reader in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its veracity.”
― Alain de Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life

“He (Proust) tells us, for instance, that there are two methods by which a person can acquire wisdom, painlessly via a teacher or painfully via life, and he proposes that the painful variety is far superior...
"We cannot be taught wisdom, we have to discover it for ourselves by a journey which no one can undertake for us, an effort which no one can spare us.”
― Alain de Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life

“Although Rizal's novels are so familiar that we even have nicknames for them, nobody takes the Noli or Fili to read on holiday except for students cramming for an exam. Studying Rizal should result in an appreciation of his life and works, but all this has turned into a boring chore.”
― Ambeth Ocampo

“Using a single word to describe two different things suggests a disregard for the world's real diversity which bears comparison with that shown by the cliché user.”
― Alain de Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life