Alain de Botton Quotes, Achievement Quotes, Ordinary Quotes

A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Achievement Quotes , Ordinary Quotes

Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Museums Quotes , Secular Society Quotes

Our bodies hold our minds hostage to their whims and rhythms.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Practice Quotes , Play 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.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us happy.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Danger Quotes

Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won't find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one and decide that everything within it will somehow be free of our faults. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through our union with the beloved hope to maintain (against the evidence of all self-knowledge) a precarious faith in our species.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Falling In Love Quotes , Elude Us 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.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which the consequences of our failures would necessarily cease to weigh upon us so heavily.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Difficulty Quotes

Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Real Quotes , Judgement Quotes

The problem with clichés is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones...If...we are obliged to create our own language, it is because there are dimensions to ourselves absent from clichés, which require us to flout etiquette in order to convey with greater accuracy the distinctive timbre of our thought.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Wisdom Quotes , Taken 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.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

It is no coincidence that the Western attraction to sublime landscapes developed at precisely the moment when traditional beliefs in God began to wane.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Sublime Quotes , Religion Quotes

The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Destiny Quotes , Stronger Quotes

Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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