Alain de Botton Quotes, Mistake Quotes, Degrees 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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Reality Quotes , Abbreviations 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

Blind impatience is equally evident in the fruit section. Our ancestors might have delighted in the occasional handful of berries found on the underside of a bush in late summer, viewing it as a sign of the unexpected munificence of a divine creator, but we became modern when we gave up on awaiting sporadic gifts from above and sought to render any pleasing sensation immediately and repeatedly available.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Summer Quotes , Berries 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.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Nice Quotes , Sunset Quotes

Work is most fulfilling when you're at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Knowing Quotes , Exciting Quotes

It seemed an advantage to be traveling alone. Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others...Being closely observed by a companion can also inhibit our observation of others; then, too, we may become caught up in adjusting ourselves to the companion's questions and remarks, or feel the need to make ourselves seem more normal than is good for our curiosity.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Company We Keep Quotes , Expectations Quotes

It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Rather than getting more spoilt with age, as difficulties pile up, epiphanies of gratitude abound.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Gratitude Quotes , Grateful Quotes

Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Spring Quotes , Events Quotes