Alain de Botton Quotes About Achievement

Quotes about: Achievement

• It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and frenetic pursuit of wealth.

  Alain de Botton

  Achievement, Challenges, Ruins

  Alain de Botton (2009). “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work”, p.218, Penguin UK

• Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.

  Alain de Botton

  Achievement, Doe, Affection

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.77, Vintage

• We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire.

  Alain de Botton

  Believe, Order, Giving

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.196, Vintage

• A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.

  Alain de Botton

  Achievement, Ordinary, Enough

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

• The pre-scientific age, whatever its deficiencies, had at least offered its members the peace of mind that follows from knowing all man-made achievements to be nothing next to the grandeur of the universe. We, more blessed in our gadgetry but less humble in our outlook, have been left... having no more compelling repository of veneration than our brilliant, precise, blinkered and morally troubling fellow human beings.

  Alain de Botton

  Blessed, Humble, Men

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2008.

• William James once made an acute point about the relationship between happiness and expectation. He argued that satisfaction with ourselves does not require us to succeed in every endeavour. We are not always humiliated by failing; we are humiliated only if we first invest our pride and sense of worth in a given achievement and then do not reach it.

  Alain de Botton

  Pride, Expectations, Achievement

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