QUOTES by Alain de Botton
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"When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"The feeling one has no time to get anything done provides the pressure that guarantees one does get some things done."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"It is according to how we are able to answer the question of what we do (normally the first enquiry we will have to field in any new acquaintance) that the quality of our reception is likely to be decided."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"Not everything which happens to us occurs with reference to something about us."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"It is surely significant that the adults who feature in children's books are rarely, if ever, Regional Sales Managers or Building Services Engineers."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"…it seems we may best be able to inhabit a place where we are not faced with the additional challenge of having to be there.” (p.23)"
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"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."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"And I wondered, with mounting anxiety, What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?"
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"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."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"When two people part, it is the one who is not in love who makes the tender speeches."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"Politics is so difficult, it's generally only people who aren't quite up to the task who feel convinced they are."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as inherent & unbudgeable as those in food."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"It seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us recognise the important things that we are too defeated or embittered to recognise from day to day."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"The sole cause of a man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"Distress at losing an object can be as much a frustration at the intellectual mystery of the disappearance as about the loss itself."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"The lesson? To respond to the unexpected and hurtful behavior of others with something more than a wipe of the glasses, to see it as a chance to expand our understanding."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"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)."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren't there. The answers are there in the morning."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"Love is an incurable disease. In love, there is permanent suffering. Those who love and those who are happy are not the same."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"If one felt successful, there'd be so little incentive to be successful."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"Dreams reveal we never quite get 'over' anything: it's all still in there somewhere."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unf�ted but life-enhancing thoughts."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"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."
Quote by -Alain de Botton
"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."
Quote by -Alain de Botton