Alain de Botton Quotes About Anxiety

Quotes about: Anxiety

• Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don't get on with machismo. I'm interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that's what we are.

  Alain de Botton

  Thinking, Opposites, Anxiety

  "Alain de Botton's Healing Arts" by Joshua Rothman, www.newyorker.com. November 19, 2013.

• No one is able to produce a great work of art without experience, nor achieve a worldly position immediately, nor be a great lover at the first attempt; and in the interval between initial failure and subsequent success, in the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation. We suffer because we cannot spontaneously master the ingredients of fulfillment.

  Alain de Botton

  Art, Pain, Envy

• It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.

  Alain de Botton

  Motivation, Inspiration, Careers

  "A kinder, gentler philosophy of success". TED Talk, www.ted.com. July, 2009.

• The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness".

  Alain de Botton

  Sadness, Worry, Personality

• Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.

  Alain de Botton

  Worry, Enjoy Life, Anxiety

  Twitter post from Oct 12, 2012

• Status Anxiety: A worry, so pernicious as to be capable of ruining extended stretches of our lives, that we are in danger of failing to conform to the ideals of success laid down by our society and that we may as a result be stripped of dignity and respect; a worry that we are currently occupying too modest a rung or are about to fall to a lower one.

  Alain de Botton

  Happiness, Success, Fall

• Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know whether or not it was funny.

  Alain de Botton

  Book, Writing, Years

• Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

  Alain de Botton

  Ambition, Anxiety, Contemporary

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.85, Vintage

• Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another--which is not to say that we should never strive to overcome any of our anxieties or fulfil any of our desires, but rather to suggest that we should perhaps build into our strivings an awareness of the way our goals promise us a respite and a resolution that they cannot, by definition, deliver.

  Alain de Botton

  Goal, Anxiety, Promise

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.197, 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

• The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be.

  Alain de Botton

  Anxiety, Might, Expecting

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.44, Vintage

• Despite its maddeningly vague, inarticulate form, anxiety is almost always trying to tell you something useful and apposite.

  Alain de Botton

  Always Trying, Anxiety, Form

  Twitter post from Apr 22, 2013

• In the gap between who we wish one day to be
  and who we are at present,
  must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.

  Alain de Botton

  Pain, Envy, Anxiety

  Alain de Botton (2001). “The Consolations of Philosophy”, p.202, Penguin UK

• Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentially for reasons of status: for not showing them respect, for humiliating them.

  Alain de Botton

  Annoyed, Anxiety, Political

• Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place; our anxiety over losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the shutter.

  Alain de Botton

  Photography, Anxiety, Losing

  Alain de Botton (2003). “The Art of Travel”, p.114, Penguin UK

• as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.

  Alain de Botton

  Anxiety, Shifting, Triggers

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