Alain de Botton Quotes - Page 9

Quotes about:

• Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the status hierarchy; they have attemptee, rather, to institute new kinds of hierarchies based on sets of values unrecognised by, and critical of, those of the majority.. They have provided us with persuasive and consoling reminders that there is more than one way of succeeding in life.

  Alain de Botton

  Art, Philosophy, Majority

  13 Copy quote

• An understandable hunger for potential clients tempts many [career counseling therapists] to overpromise, like creative writing teachers who, out of greed or sentimentality, sometimes imply that all of their students could one day produce worthwhile literature, rather than frankly acknowledging the troubling truth, anathema to a democratic society, that the great writer, like the contented worker, remains an erratic and anomalous event, immune to the methods of factory farming.

  Alain de Botton

  Teacher, Writing, Careers

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

  6 Copy quote

• He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity - suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction.

  Alain de Botton

  Heart, Mediocrity, May

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

  6 Copy quote

• Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.

  Alain de Botton

  Regret, Opportunity, Allowance

  Alain de Botton (2012). “How Proust Can Change Your Life”, p.123, Pan Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.

  Alain de Botton

  Book, Writing, Sick

  5 Copy quote

• Distress at losing an object can be as much a frustration at the intellectual mystery of the disappearance as about the loss itself.

  Alain de Botton

  Loss, Frustration, Intellectual

  5 Copy quote

• A lump rises in our throat at the sight of beauty from an implicit knowledge that the happiness it hints at is the exception.

  Alain de Botton

  Sight, Hints, Throat

  5 Copy quote

• It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.

  Alain de Botton

  Philosophy, Book, Sound

  9 Copy quote

• I thought about societies where exceptional fortunes are built up in industries with very little connection to out sincere and significant needs, industries where it is difficult to escape from the disparity between a seriousness of means and a triviality of ends.

  Alain de Botton

  Mean, Connections, Needs

  Alain de Botton (2009). “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work”, p.73, Penguin UK

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• The degree of sympathy we feel regarding another's fiasco is directly proportional to how easy or difficult it is for us to imagine ourselves, under like circumstances, making a similar mistake.

  Alain de Botton

  Mistake, Degrees, Imagine

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.149, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  10 Copy quote

• Though debts are condemned in the financial world, the world of friendship and love may perversely depend on well-managed debts.

  Alain de Botton

  Love And Friendship, And Love, Debt

  5 Copy quote

• Our sense of what is valuable will hence be radically distorted if we must perpetually condemn as tedious everything we lack, simply because we lack it.

  Alain de Botton

  Valuable, Tedious, Ifs

  Alain de Botton (2012). “How Proust Can Change Your Life”, p.82, Pan Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• Never, ever become a writer. It's a nightmare.

  Alain de Botton

  Nightmare

  5 Copy quote

• Politics is so difficult, it's generally only people who aren't quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.

  Alain de Botton

  People, Tasks, Difficult

  Twitter post from Jan 04, 2013

  5 Copy quote

• We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.

  Alain de Botton

  Survival, Safe, Tests

  Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.87, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  5 Copy quote

• A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.

  Alain de Botton

  Travel, Giving, Wish

  5 Copy quote

• It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.

  Alain de Botton

  Home, Self, Encounters

  5 Copy quote

• Perhaps because the origins of a certain kind of love lie in an impulse to escape ourselves and out weaknesses by an alliance with the beautiful and noble. But if the loved ones love us back, we are forced to return to ourselves, and are hence reminded of the things that had driven us into love in the first place. Perhaps it was not love we wanted after all, perhaps it was simply someone in whom to believe, but how can we continue to believe the the beloved now that they believe in us?

  Alain de Botton

  Beautiful, Lying, Believe

  5 Copy quote

• The media insists on taking what someone didn't mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.

  Alain de Botton

  Mean, Media

  5 Copy quote

• One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.

  Alain de Botton

  Art, Suffering, Important

  5 Copy quote

• According to one influential wing of modern secular society there are few more disreputable fates than to end up being 'like everyone else' for 'everyone else' is a category that comprises the mediocre and the conformist, the boring and the suburban. The goal of all right-thinking people should be to mark themselves off from the crowd and 'stand out' in whatever way their talents allow.

  Alain de Botton

  Fate, Thinking, Secular Society

  7 Copy quote

• The more dignity is widely and freely available in a society, the less people want to be famous.

  Alain de Botton

  People, Want, Dignity

  Twitter post from Feb 13, 2013

  5 Copy quote

• What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.

  Alain de Botton

  Home, Exotic, May

  "Toothbrush, bikini... and dead poet" by Philip Marsden, www.theguardian.com. May 19, 2002.

  5 Copy quote

Page 9 of 15

First

← Prev

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin