• Categories
  • Alain de Botton Quotes   372
  • The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Love Quotes , Two Quotes
  • 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.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Happiness Quotes , Success Quotes
  • 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.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Mean Quotes , Connections Quotes
  • 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.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Teacher Quotes , Writing Quotes
  • Rather than teasing the buyers, we may blame the society in which they lived for setting up a situation where the purchase of ornate cabinets felt psychologically necessary and rewarding, where respect was dependent on baroque displays. Rather than a tale of greed, the history of luxury could more accurately be read as a record of emotional trauma. It is the legacy of those who have felt pressured by the disdain of others to add an extraordinary amount to their bare selves in order to signal that they too may lay a claim to love.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Emotional Quotes , Luxury Quotes
  • 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.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Understanding Quotes , Laziness Quotes
  • Differ though we might with Christianity's view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis, which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one-that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Religious Quotes , Atheist Quotes
  • The architects who benefit us most maybe those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius in order to devote themselves to assembling graceful but predominantly unoriginal boxes. Architecture should have the confidence and the kindness to be a little boring.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Kindness Quotes , Order Quotes