Alain de Botton Quotes, Children Quotes, Parent 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

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

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Good Relationship Quotes

It wasn't only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Stranger Quotes , Conversation Quotes

A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Successful Quotes , Exciting 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.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Country Quotes , May 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

I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Jobs Quotes , Perfect 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.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn't call.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Hands Quotes , Telephones Quotes

Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to have a successful life. Some of these suggestions are deeply unhelpful to our own projects and priorities - and we should take care.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Successful Quotes , Bombarded By Quotes

On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community we live in. We tend to become good or bad depending on the cues sent out within a particular space.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Space Quotes , Community Quotes

There are people who say, 'Oh this guy is quite thick.' I think the reason is that, increasingly, I don't mind being simple in terms of literary expression. Others say, 'No, no, no. He went to Cambridge. He got a good degree. He must be Einstein.'

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Eels Quotes , Style Quotes

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

Message Copied

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

Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Travel Quotes , Journey Quotes

The pre-scientific age, whatever its deficiencies, had at least offered its members the peace of mind that follows from knowing all man-made achievements to be nothing next to the grandeur of the universe. We, more blessed in our gadgetry but less humble in our outlook, have been left... having no more compelling repository of veneration than our brilliant, precise, blinkered and morally troubling fellow human beings.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Blessed Quotes , Humble Quotes

No one is able to produce a great work of art without experience, nor achieve a worldly position immediately, nor be a great lover at the first attempt; and in the interval between initial failure and subsequent success, in the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation. We suffer because we cannot spontaneously master the ingredients of fulfillment.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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