Alain de Botton Quotes, Fighting Quotes, Balance Quotes

There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Fighting Quotes , Balance Quotes

Envy: a confused, tangled guide to one's own ambitions.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Confused Quotes , Ambition Quotes

The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Play Quotes , Judgement Quotes

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.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Mistake Quotes , Degrees Quotes

Symons remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him was the idea that they ought somehow, in the normal course of events, to have intuited long before they had finished their degrees, started families, bought houses and risen to the top of law firms - what they should properly be doing with their lives. They were tormented by a residual notion of having through some error or stupidity on their part missed out on their true calling.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Law Quotes , Ideas Quotes

People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , People Quotes , Personality Quotes

Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Inspiring Quotes , Maturity Quotes

We accept the need to train extensively to fly a plane; but think instinct should be enough for marrying and raising kids.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Kids Quotes , Thinking Quotes

The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Smartphones Quotes , Interesting Quotes

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.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Valuable Quotes , Tedious Quotes

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.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Powerful Quotes , Distance Quotes

The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Children Quotes , Parent Quotes

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

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Art Quotes , Suffering Quotes

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

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Achievement Quotes , Ordinary Quotes

It looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is actually the ultimate time-saver - because it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you years, decades, millennia to try to experience directly. Literature is the greatest reality simulator - a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Reality Quotes , Years Quotes

We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Crowds Quotes , Stuff Quotes

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.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Regret Quotes , Opportunity Quotes

The finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Loyalty Quotes , Finest Quotes

I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Believe Quotes , Argument Quotes

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.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Heart Quotes , Mediocrity Quotes