![]() Waiting feels like the oldest of human activities stretching back to the senators pacing outside the emperor’s quarters in imperial Rome and the merchants lined up to see the caliph in the marble–lined palaces of medieval Cordoba.” (p228)Ī basement stationery store is “stocked more prodigiously than Aladdin’s cave.” (p.231)Ī lamp swaying in the wind is “a satisfyingly obvious symbol of stoicism in adversity.”(p209). “A receptionist, no less aware of the solemnity of her role than a priestess at the Temple of Delphi, is on hand for a short initiation ceremony, handing you a badge and directing you to the sofas with a tenuous promise of rescue. Thus when de Botton is being kept waiting in the reception area of a grand building on one of the multiple red leather sofas, he notes that the experience “enforces the impression of the importance of one’s hosts in the upper floors. ![]() The most mundane activity is brought to life. ![]()
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