Alain de Botton Quotes, Home Quotes, Mind Quotes

We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich people, we will start to think that to be beautiful and rich is very important - just as in the Middle Ages, people were surrounded by images of religious piety.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two peoples who feel deeply humiliated by the other, who want the other to respect them. Battles over status can be even more intractable than those over land or water or oil.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , War Quotes , Land Quotes

If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Her lie was symptomatic of a certain pride she took in mocking the romantic, in being unsentimental, matter-of-fact, stoic; yet at heart she was the oppo site: idealistic, dreamy, giving, and deeply attached to everything she liked verbally to dismiss as "mushy.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Lying Quotes , Heart 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

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

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

So many complaints boil down to the belly ache of the fragile, mortal, ignored ego in a vast and indifferent universe.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Ego Quotes , Ignored Quotes

The secular world is full of holes. We have secularized badly.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Book Quotes , Reading Quotes

At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Lying Quotes , Heart 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

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

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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Understanding Quotes , Laziness Quotes

Being funny should be an incidental byproduct of trying to get to something truthful, not a destination in itself.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Trying Quotes , Truthful Quotes

We should not be frightened by appearances.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Appearance Quotes , Should Quotes

Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Nowhere was the airport's charm more concentrated than on the screens placed at intervals across the terminal which announced, in deliberately workmanlike fonts, the itineraries of aircraft about to take to the skies. These screens implied a feeling of infinite and immediate possibility: they suggested the ease with which we might impulsively approach a ticket desk and, within a few hours, embark for a country where the call to prayer rang out over shuttered whitewashed houses, where we understood nothing of the language and where no one knew our identities.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Country Quotes , Prayer Quotes

Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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