3 h 55 minAudiobook12 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What place do beauty and doubt have in a life lived well?
In The Garden of Epicurus, Anatole France explores beauty, doubt, and the art of living well through philosophical essays. These ideas bring the focus back to life itself: what draws our attention, what we question, and what it means to live well.
France places beauty beside doubt, inviting you to consider both rather than choose between them. This is philosophy to approach through questions about living. The essays offer a place to pause over those questions and give the search for a good life your full attention.
What you’ll discover
- Beauty as a question Explore beauty as an idea that belongs within the larger question of living well.
- Room for doubt Give doubt your attention as one of the central concerns of France’s philosophical essays.
- The art of living Consider what living well means when beauty and doubt both have a place.
- An encounter with France Meet Anatole France through essays that bring his philosophical interests into focus.
- Questions to linger over Pause with ideas about beauty, uncertainty, and the life you want to lead.
Who will love it
Readers who enjoy witty essays, wandering curiosity and a warm, ironic voice will feel at home here, as will anyone who loves saints and scholars, books and poets, or who likes to think about love, beauty and doubt.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- The universe is vast and we are small
- Illusion, ignorance and chance make life bearable
- Love lives on dreams, danger and desire
- Suffering and evil give life its worth
- Distrust grand systems and enjoy ideas as play
- Change is slow and the old endures
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- 3 h 55 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
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- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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Il giardino di Epicuro
by Anatole France · 1895
Phoenician Cadmus appears in a smoky study, and a hermit in a ruined priory gives up thinking.
Medium level2–5 hours to read25 languages
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In short
The Garden of Epicurus is a book of short pieces by Anatole France, the French writer who died in 1924. Some are a single sentence, others run a few pages.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
The universe is vast and we are small
The book opens with a picture of a man of the Middle Ages. He believes the earth sits at the center of twelve heavens, with hell beneath his feet and the blessed above the stars. France says the universe he knew was so simple that a large painted clock could show all of it. That picture has gone, and in its place the sky opens into a hundred million suns.
France then looks at what astronomy has taught. Stars are born and die, and some we still see may have gone dark three thousand years ago. Our sun is a bubble of gas, and the earth is a drop of mud. Spectral analysis shows that the stars are made of the same stuff as our own sun, so he guesses that life may arise on other worlds. Mars, he says with a grin, is probably inhabited by creatures who are devouring one another right now.
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What is The Garden of Epicurus about?
It is a collection of short essays, sketches and dialogues in which Anatole France reflects on doubt, love, beauty, science, religion and suffering. He argues for irony, pity and a gentle curiosity instead of certainty and grand systems.
Why is the book called The Garden of Epicurus?
Epicurus was a Greek thinker who taught among friends in a garden. France links him with other calm doubters, and the book itself calls this human life our garden, which we must dig with zeal.
Is The Garden of Epicurus a novel or a set of essays?
It is a set of short pieces, including one-paragraph thoughts, essays, two dialogues and a ghost story. You can open it almost anywhere, and each piece stands on its own with a clear voice.
The author
Anatole France
1844–1924 · French novelist
Anatole France (1844–1924) was a French novelist, poet and essayist. He was born in Paris and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire, France. His novels include The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881), Thaïs (1890), The Red Lily (1894), Penguin Island (1908) and The Revolt of the Angels (1914).
More by Anatole France
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