Alain de Botton Quotes

Quotes about:

• Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.

  Alain de Botton

  People, Want, Better Life

  25 Copy quote

• Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.

  Alain de Botton

  Impossible, Worried, Minutes

  4 Copy quote

• For paranoia about 'what other people think' : remember that only some hate, a very few love - and almost all just don't care.

  Alain de Botton

  Hate, Thinking, People

  Twitter post from Sep 18, 2014

  3 Copy quote

• The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.

  Alain de Botton

  Smartphones, Interesting, Challenges

  "The Radical Rethink of THINK Global School" by Breanna Reynolds, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 24, 2017.

  109 Copy quote

• There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.

  Alain de Botton

  Fighting, Balance, Work And Life

  Twitter post from Oct 14, 2015

  90 Copy quote

• Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.

  Alain de Botton

  Inspiring, Maturity, Opinion

  Twitter post from Jan 29, 2014

  33 Copy quote

• It looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is actually the ultimate time-saver - because it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you years, decades, millennia to try to experience directly. Literature is the greatest reality simulator - a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.

  Alain de Botton

  Reality, Years, Giving

  89 Copy quote

• Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.

  Alain de Botton

  Real, Weakness, May

  Alain de Botton (2006). “On Love: A Novel”, p.134, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  119 Copy quote

• Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.

  Alain de Botton

  Years, Lasts, Enough

  Twitter post from Mar 04, 2015

  89 Copy quote

• 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.

  Alain de Botton

  Pain, Thinking, Suffering

  Alain De Botton (1997). “How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel”, Pantheon

  58 Copy quote

• The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.

  Alain de Botton

  Thinking, People, Normal

  Twitter post from Sep 14, 2014

  61 Copy quote

• You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.

  Alain de Botton

  Nice, Sunset, Daffodil

  135 Copy quote

• The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things

  Alain de Botton

  Looks, Way, Realising

  27 Copy quote

• Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.

  Alain de Botton

  Relationship, Intimacy, Capacity

  Twitter post from Oct 30, 2013

  88 Copy quote

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

  Alain de Botton

  Suffering, Behaviour, Malice

  58 Copy quote

• 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.

  Alain de Botton

  Giving Up, Ambition, Journey

  "What's A Kinder Way To Frame Success?". Interview with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. November 1, 2013.

  54 Copy quote

• Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own - but that we could never have described on our own.

  Alain de Botton

  Book, Emotion, Good Book

  Twitter post from Oct 13, 2013

  6 Copy quote

• One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.

  Alain de Botton

  Good Relationship, Capacity

  Twitter post from Mar 16, 2014

  73 Copy quote

• The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.

  Alain de Botton

  Differences, Despair, Different

  Twitter post from Jan 08, 2013

  30 Copy quote

• True love is a lack of desire to check one's smartphone in another's presence.

  Alain de Botton

  Love Is, Smartphones, Desire

  14 Copy quote

• Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don't get on with machismo. I'm interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that's what we are.

  Alain de Botton

  Thinking, Opposites, Anxiety

  "Alain de Botton's Healing Arts" by Joshua Rothman, www.newyorker.com. November 19, 2013.

  84 Copy quote

• Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.

  Alain de Botton

  Writing, Doing Nothing, Exceed

  Twitter post from Mar 26, 2015

  15 Copy quote

• To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.

  Alain de Botton

  Love Is, Views, Names

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.6, Vintage

  15 Copy quote

• Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.

  Alain de Botton

  Writing, Self, Careers

  Twitter post from May 28, 2013

  6 Copy quote

• I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.

  Alain de Botton

  Jobs, Perfect, Excuse

  "Office affairs". Interview with Lynn Barber, www.theguardian.com. March 21, 2009.

  44 Copy quote

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