Alain de Botton Quotes, Heart Quotes, Mediocrity 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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Sleep Quotes

...if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Love Quotes , May Quotes

There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

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

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Always Trying Quotes , Anxiety Quotes

Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Levels Quotes

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

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Pain Quotes , Envy 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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others - because it's a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Tools Quotes , Literature Quotes

The dream of the news is that it makes us care about other people and situations. But we cannot identify with people to whom we haven't been introduced. Humans will only respond to art, to people who are skilled in making you care.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "luxury.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Views Quotes , Luxury Quotes

The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Esoteric Quotes , Blunt Quotes

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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Survival Quotes , Safe Quotes

At the beginning of human history, as we struggled to light fires and to chisel fallen trees into rudimentary canoes, who could have predicted that long after we had managed to send men to the moon and areoplanes to Australasia, we would still have such trouble knowing how to tolerate ourselves, forgive our loved ones, and apologise for our tantrums?

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Moon Quotes , Men Quotes

Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Writing Quotes , Doing Nothing Quotes

Man seems merely dust postponed: the sublime as an encounter - pleasurable, intoxicating, even - with human weakness in the face of strength, age and size of the universe.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Men Quotes , Dust Quotes

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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Home Quotes , Self Quotes

It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Infidelity Quotes , Growing Quotes

It's hard loving those who don't much like themselves: "If you're so great, why would you think I'm so great.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Self Hatred Quotes