Alain de Botton Quotes, Taken Quotes, Century Quotes

It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Taken Quotes , Century 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

We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like; we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Envy Quotes , Groups 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

The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Memories Quotes , Lying Quotes

.. if you asked most people whether they believed in love or not, they’d probably say they didn’t. Yet that’s not necessarily what they truly think. It’s just the way they defend themselves against what they want. They believe in it, but pretend they don’t until they’re allowed to. Most people would throw away all their cynicism if they could. The majority just never gets the chance.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

I never wavered in my certainty that God did not exist. I was simply liberated by the thought that there might be a way to engage with religion without having to subscribe to its supernatural content - a way, to put it in more abstract terms, to think about Fathers without upsetting my respectful memory of my own father. I recognized that my continuing resistance to theories of an afterlife or of heavenly residents was no justification for giving up on the music, buildings, prayers, rituals, feasts, shrines, pilgrimages, communal meals and illustrated manuscripts of the faiths.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Atheist Quotes , Giving Up Quotes

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

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Revenge Quotes , Victory Quotes

One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This too shall pass.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Age Quotes , Aging Quotes

Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Intelligent Quotes , Insanity Quotes

Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Interesting Quotes , Hegel Quotes

The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Esoteric Quotes , Blunt Quotes

According to Montaigne, it was the oppressive notion that we had complete mental control over our bodies, and the horror of departing from this portrait of normality, that had left the man unable to perform sexually.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

Life gives us no such handy markers - a storm comes, and far from this being a harbinger of death and collapse, during its course a person discovers love and truth, beauty and happiness, the rain lashing at the windows all the while.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Rain Quotes , Giving Quotes

Religions are so subtle, so complicated, so intelligent in many ways that they're not fit to be abandoned to the religious alone; they're for all of us.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Survival Quotes , Safe Quotes

Choosing a spouse and a choosing career: the two great decisions for which society refuses to set up institutional guidance.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , High Standards Quotes , Standards Quotes