They inspired this book, which the author hopes might function a little like one of those eighteenth-century cityscapes which show us people at work from the quayside to the temple, the parliament to the counting house, panoramas like those of Canaletto in which, within a single giant frame, one can witness dockers unloading crates, merchants bargaining in the main square, bakers before their overs, women sewing at their windows and councils of ministers assembled in a palace—inclusive scenes which serve to remind us of the place which work accords to each of us within the human hive. I was inspired by the men at the pier to attempt a hymn to the intelligence, peculiarity, beauty and horror of the modern work place and, not least, its extraordinary claim to be able to provide us, alongside love, with the principal source of life’s meaning.
— Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.