Alain de Botton Quotes

Quotes about:

• To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.

  Alain de Botton

  Love Is, Views, Names

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.6, Vintage

  19 Copy quote

• Rather than getting more spoilt with age, as difficulties pile up, epiphanies of gratitude abound.

  Alain de Botton

  Gratitude, Grateful, Age

  6 Copy quote

• We don't really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped ... We suffer, therefore we think.

  Alain de Botton

  Pain, Thinking, Suffering

  Alain De Botton (1997). “How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel”, Pantheon

  63 Copy quote

• The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.

  Alain de Botton

  Smartphones, Interesting, Challenges

  "The Radical Rethink of THINK Global School" by Breanna Reynolds, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 24, 2017.

  111 Copy quote

• Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.

  Alain de Botton

  Inspiring, Maturity, Opinion

  Twitter post from Jan 29, 2014

  38 Copy quote

• Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.

  Alain de Botton

  Years, Lasts, Enough

  Twitter post from Mar 04, 2015

  93 Copy quote

• There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.

  Alain de Botton

  Fighting, Balance, Work And Life

  Twitter post from Oct 14, 2015

  94 Copy quote

• For paranoia about 'what other people think' : remember that only some hate, a very few love - and almost all just don't care.

  Alain de Botton

  Hate, Thinking, People

  Twitter post from Sep 18, 2014

  7 Copy quote

• Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.

  Alain de Botton

  Real, Weakness, May

  Alain de Botton (2006). “On Love: A Novel”, p.134, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  126 Copy quote

• Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.

  Alain de Botton

  People, Want, Better Life

  33 Copy quote

• The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.

  Alain de Botton

  Thinking, People, Normal

  Twitter post from Sep 14, 2014

  65 Copy quote

• The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things

  Alain de Botton

  Looks, Way, Realising

  31 Copy quote

• It looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is actually the ultimate time-saver - because it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you years, decades, millennia to try to experience directly. Literature is the greatest reality simulator - a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.

  Alain de Botton

  Reality, Years, Giving

  95 Copy quote

• You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.

  Alain de Botton

  Nice, Sunset, Daffodil

  145 Copy quote

• Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.

  Alain de Botton

  Relationship, Intimacy, Capacity

  Twitter post from Oct 30, 2013

  91 Copy quote

• One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.

  Alain de Botton

  Good Relationship, Capacity

  Twitter post from Mar 16, 2014

  80 Copy quote

• People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft.

  Alain de Botton

  People, Forgiving, Goes On

  Twitter post from Mar 13, 2015

  5 Copy quote

• Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.

  Alain de Botton

  Suffering, Behaviour, Malice

  61 Copy quote

• Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.

  Alain de Botton

  Sadness, Feelings, Weakness

  24 Copy quote

• A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.

  Alain de Botton

  Suicide, Animal, Inability

  Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.113, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  10 Copy quote

• What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we're truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it's bad enough not getting what you want, but it's even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn't, in fact, what you wanted all along.

  Alain de Botton

  Giving Up, Ambition, Journey

  "What's A Kinder Way To Frame Success?". Interview with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. November 1, 2013.

  57 Copy quote

• We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich people, we will start to think that to be beautiful and rich is very important - just as in the Middle Ages, people were surrounded by images of religious piety.

  Alain de Botton

  Beautiful, Religious, Thinking

  8 Copy quote

• Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.

  Alain de Botton

  Essence, Alive, Speak

  Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.60, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  24 Copy quote

• We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

  Alain de Botton

  Beautiful, Should, Embarrassed

  "The Consolations of Philosophy". Book by Alain de Botton, Chapter VI, Consolation For Difficulties, 2000.

  16 Copy quote

• Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that the impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence.

  Alain de Botton

  Writing, Simplicity, Belief

  5 Copy quote

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