Alain de Botton Quotes, Home Quotes, Dwelling Quotes

We are sad at home and blame the weather and the ugliness of the buildings, but on the tropical island we learn that the state of the skies and the appearance of our dwellings can never on their own underwrite our joy nor condemn us to misery.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Mind Quotes , New Work Quotes

For all his understanding of worldly concerns, when it came to fathoming the deeper meaning of his own furious activity, Sir Bob displayed the sort of laziness for which he himself had no patience in others. He appeared to have only a passing interest in the overall purpose of his financial accumulation.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Understanding Quotes , Laziness Quotes

As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Writing Quotes , What Matters Quotes

The real issue is not whether baking biscuits is meaningful, but the extent to which the activity can seem to be so after it has been continuously stretched and subdivided across five thousand lives.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Regret Quotes , Opportunity Quotes

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

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Worry Quotes , Enjoy Life Quotes

The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Suffering Quotes , Behaviour Quotes

Our sense of what is valuable will hence be radically distorted if we must perpetually condemn as tedious everything we lack, simply because we lack it.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Valuable Quotes , Tedious Quotes

Though debts are condemned in the financial world, the world of friendship and love may perversely depend on well-managed debts.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Love And Friendship Quotes , And Love 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

I'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage - which no previous society has ever believed.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Sex Quotes , Suggestions Quotes

The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of disappointing others.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Tiny Quotes , Disappointing 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.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Understanding Quotes , Findings Quotes

Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Philosophy Quotes , Able Quotes