Alain de Botton Quotes, Art Quotes, Feelings Quotes

Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm... it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Must being in love always mean being in pain?

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Pain Quotes , Mean Quotes

The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do; the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

The very act of drawing an object, however badly, swiftly takes the drawer from a woolly sense of what the object looks like to a precise awareness of its component parts and particularities.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Drawing Quotes , Looks Quotes

Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Good Life Quotes , Crazy Quotes

There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Impossible Quotes , Worried Quotes

We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another--which is not to say that we should never strive to overcome any of our anxieties or fulfil any of our desires, but rather to suggest that we should perhaps build into our strivings an awareness of the way our goals promise us a respite and a resolution that they cannot, by definition, deliver.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Goal Quotes , Anxiety Quotes

People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Intelligent Quotes , Insanity Quotes

Religions are so subtle, so complicated, so intelligent in many ways that they're not fit to be abandoned to the religious alone; they're for all of us.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , God Quotes , Religious Quotes

Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as inherent & unbudgeable as those in food.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Book Quotes , Best Effort 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

Someone who has thought rationally and deeply about how the body works is likely to arrive at better ideas about how to be healthy than someone who has followed a hunch. Medicine presupposes a hierarchy between the confusion the layperson will be in about what is wrong with him, and the more accurate knowledge available to doctors reasoning logically. At the heart of Epicureanism is the thought that we are as bad at answering the question "What will make me happy?" as "What will make me healthy?" Our souls do not spell out their troubles.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we're truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it's bad enough not getting what you want, but it's even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn't, in fact, what you wanted all along.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Giving Up Quotes , Ambition Quotes

Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Inspirational Quotes , Obvious Things 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

Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, "Don't you worry about being called names?" retorted, "Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day to day take on things. The bare facts of life are utterly terrifying. And yet, one can laugh. Indeed, one has to laugh precisely because of the darkness: the nervous laughter of the trenches.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Laughter Quotes , Optimistic Quotes