Alain de Botton Quotes - Page 14

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• We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy: they are our covert guides to what we should try to do next.

  Alain de Botton

  Envy, Trying, Diaries

  Twitter post from Dec 29, 2012

  6 Copy quote

• In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well.

  Alain de Botton

  Running, Writing, Envy

  5 Copy quote

• According to Montaigne, it was the oppressive notion that we had complete mental control over our bodies, and the horror of departing from this portrait of normality, that had left the man unable to perform sexually.

  Alain de Botton

  Love, Men, Portraits

  5 Copy quote

• We may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they're doing it.

  Alain de Botton

  God, Soul, Trying

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.

  Alain de Botton

  Jobs, Sunday, Personality

  5 Copy quote

• Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.

  Alain de Botton

  Space, Shy, Manipulation

  5 Copy quote

• For all his understanding of worldly concerns, when it came to fathoming the deeper meaning of his own furious activity, Sir Bob displayed the sort of laziness for which he himself had no patience in others. He appeared to have only a passing interest in the overall purpose of his financial accumulation.

  Alain de Botton

  Understanding, Laziness, Bob

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

• Our bodies hold our minds hostage to their whims and rhythms.

  Alain de Botton

  Mind, Body, Whim

  "The Consolations of Philosophy". Book by Alain de Botton, 2000.

  8 Copy quote

• We might have been ready to offer sympathy, but in actuality there were stronger reasons to want to congratulate her for having found such a powerful motive to feel sad. We should have envied her for having located someone without whom she so firmly felt she could not survive, beyond the gate let along in a bare student bedroom in a suburb of Rio. If she had been able to view her situation from a sufficient distance, she might have been able to recognise this as one of the high points in her life.

  Alain de Botton

  Powerful, Distance, Views

  5 Copy quote

• Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.

  Alain de Botton

  Photography, Attention, Done

  8 Copy quote

• Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts.

  Alain de Botton

  Travel, Journey, Might

  Alain de Botton (2003). “The Art of Travel”, p.66, Penguin UK

  5 Copy quote

• How do the stems connect to the roots?' 'Where is the mist coming from?' 'Why does one tree seem darker than another?' These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.

  Alain de Botton

  Roots, Tree, Doe

  5 Copy quote

• Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence; no painting ever captures the whole.

  Alain de Botton

  Reality, Choices, Painting

  8 Copy quote

• Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.

  Alain de Botton

  Reality, Abbreviations, Artistic

  Alain de Botton (2003). “The Art of Travel”, p.13, Penguin UK

  8 Copy quote

• It is no coincidence that the Western attraction to sublime landscapes developed at precisely the moment when traditional beliefs in God began to wane.

  Alain de Botton

  Sublime, Religion, Landscape

  5 Copy quote

• Alcohol-inspired fights are a reminder of the price we pay for our daily submission at the altars of prudence and order.

  Alain de Botton

  Fighting, Order, Alcohol

  Alain de Botton (2009). “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work”, p.28, Penguin UK

  5 Copy quote

• It would be foolish to describe the logistics hub as merely ugly, for it has the horrifying, soulless, immaculate beauty characteristic of many of the workplaces of the modern world.

  Alain de Botton

  Would Be, World, Ugly

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2009.

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

  Alain de Botton

  Ambition, Anxiety, Contemporary

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

  5 Copy quote

• A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which the consequences of our failures would necessarily cease to weigh upon us so heavily.

  Alain de Botton

  Art, Majority, Would Be

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.156, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

• We should not be frightened by appearances.

  Alain de Botton

  Appearance, Should, Frightened

  "The Consolations of Philosophy". Book by Alain de Botton, 2000.

  5 Copy quote

• There are selections so acute that they come to define a place, with the result that we can no longer travel through that landscape without being reminded of what a great artist noticed there.

  Alain de Botton

  Artist, Greatness, Landscape

  8 Copy quote

• The activities of drawing, eating and drinking, all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness from without to within.

  Alain de Botton

  Drinking, Self, Drawing

  8 Copy quote

• We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need — but are at constant risk of forgetting what we need — within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves.

  Alain de Botton

  Self, Ideas, Risk

  Alain de Botton (2007). “The Architecture of Happiness”, p.55, Penguin UK

  5 Copy quote

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