Alain de Botton Quotes, Iron Quotes, Velvet Quotes

Responsible for wrapping the iron fist of authority in its velvet glove is Jane Axtell, head of the accountancy firm's Human Resources department.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Iron Quotes , Velvet Quotes

There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Travel Quotes , Information 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

To cut out every negative root would simultaneously mean choking off positive elements that might arise from it further up the stem of the plant. We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Rather than teasing the buyers, we may blame the society in which they lived for setting up a situation where the purchase of ornate cabinets felt psychologically necessary and rewarding, where respect was dependent on baroque displays. Rather than a tale of greed, the history of luxury could more accurately be read as a record of emotional trauma. It is the legacy of those who have felt pressured by the disdain of others to add an extraordinary amount to their bare selves in order to signal that they too may lay a claim to love.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Emotional Quotes , Luxury Quotes

Distress at losing an object can be as much a frustration at the intellectual mystery of the disappearance as about the loss itself.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

It's as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you're living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest - in all its ardour and paradoxes - than our travels.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Happiness Quotes , Quests Quotes

It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes you hate humanity - but when you see people at their work they elicit respect, whether it's a mechanic, a stonemason or an accountant.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Beach Quotes , Hate Quotes

If the behaviour of babies and small children is any guide, we emerge into the world with our tendencies to imbalance already well entrenched. In our playpens and high chairs, we are rarely far from displaying either hysterical happiness or savage disappointment, love or rage, mania or exhaustion--and, despite the growth of a more temperate exterior in adulthood, we seldom succeed in laying claim to lasting equilibrium, traversing our lives like stubbornly listing ships on choppy seas.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Baby Quotes , Disappointment Quotes

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

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Danger Quotes

The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

5 years ago

Message Copied

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

Out of the millions of people we live among, most of whom we habitually ignore and are ignored by in turn, there are always a few that hold hostage our capacity for happiness, whom we could recognize by their smell alone and whom we would rather die than be without.

5 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Smell Quotes , People 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