Alain de Botton Quotes, Writing Quotes, What Matters 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

Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, "Don't you worry about being called names?" retorted, "Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

We don't really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped ... We suffer, therefore we think.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

The universe is large and we are tiny, without the need for further religious superstructure. One can have so-called spiritual moments without belief in the spirit.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Lying Quotes , Heart 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

If it is true that love is the pursuit in another of qualities we lack in ourselves, then in our love of someone from another culture, one ambition may be to weld ourselves more closely to values missing from our own culture.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Ambition Quotes , Love Is Quotes

We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Should 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

The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Travel Quotes , Journey 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

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

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.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Significant Things Quotes , People Quotes

What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we're truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it's bad enough not getting what you want, but it's even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn't, in fact, what you wanted all along.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Art Quotes , Suffering 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.

6 years ago

Message Copied

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

The bourgeois thinkers of the eighteenth century thus turned Aristotle's formula on its head: satisfactions which the Greek philosopher had identified with leisure were now transposed to the sphere of work, while tasks lacking in any financial reward were drained of all significance and left to the haphazard attentions of decadent dilettantes. It now seemed as impossible that one could be happy and unproductive as it had once seemed unlikely that one could work and be human.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Greek Quotes , Rewards Quotes

We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.

6 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Views Quotes , Quality Quotes