The Consolations of Philosophy [Paperback]

From the internationally heralded author ofHow Proust Can Change Your Lifecomes this remarkable new book that presents the wisdom of some of the greatest thinkers of the ages as advice for our day to day struggles.

Solace for the broken heart can be found in the words of Schopenhauer. The ancient Greek Epicurus has the wisest, and most affordable, solution to cash flow problems. A remedy for impotence lies in Montaigne. Seneca offers advice upon losing a job. And Nietzsche has shrewd counsel for everything from loneliness to illness.The Consolations of Philosophyis a book as accessibly erudite as it is useful and entertaining.
“Wonderfully original, quirky.... De Botton finds inspiration where others might fail to look.”–NewsdayAlain de Botton is the author ofOn Love, The Romantic Movement, Kiss and Tell, andHow Proust Can Change Your Life(available in paperback from Vintage Books). His work has been translated into twenty languages. He lives in Washington, D.C., and London, where he is a director of the Graduate Philosophy Program at London University.Consolations for Unpopularity
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A few years ago, during a bitter New York winter, with an afternoon to spare before catching a flight to London, I found myself in a deserted gallery on the upper level of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was brightly lit, and aside from the soothing hum of an under-floor heating system, entirely silent. Having reached a surfeit of paintings in the Impressionist galleries, I was looking for a sign for the cafeteria -- where I hoped to buy a glass of a certain variety of American chocolate milk of which I was at that time extremely fond -- when my eye was caught by a canvas which a caption explained had been painted in Paris in the autumn of 1786 by the thirty-eight-year-old Jacques-Louis David.

Socrates, condemned to death by the people of Athens, prepares to drink a cup of hemlock, surrounded by wol“{