Alain de Botton Quotes - Page 12

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

  Alain de Botton

  Travel, Journey, Mindset

  "The Art of Travel". Book by Alain de Botton, 2002.

  7 Copy quote

• Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as inherent & unbudgeable as those in food.

  Alain de Botton

  Book, Best Effort, Taste

  5 Copy quote

• The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.

  Alain de Botton

  Country, May, Developing Countries

  Alain de Botton (2009). “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work”, p.40, Penguin UK

  13 Copy quote

• Our bodies hold our minds hostage to their whims and rhythms.

  Alain de Botton

  Mind, Body, Whim

  "The Consolations of Philosophy". Book by Alain de Botton, 2000.

  8 Copy quote

• We should not be frightened by appearances.

  Alain de Botton

  Appearance, Should, Frightened

  "The Consolations of Philosophy". Book by Alain de Botton, 2000.

  5 Copy quote

• Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.

  Alain de Botton

  Book, Done, Remains

  8 Copy quote

• As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers - and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.

  Alain de Botton

  Atheist, Thinking, Trying

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Alain de Botton

  Sex, Suggestions, Modern

  9 Copy quote

• The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two peoples who feel deeply humiliated by the other, who want the other to respect them. Battles over status can be even more intractable than those over land or water or oil.

  Alain de Botton

  War, Land, Two

  13 Copy quote

• I assemble my ideas in pieces on a computer file, then gradually find a place for them on a piece of scaffolding I erect.

  Alain de Botton

  Ideas, Pieces, Computer

  11 Copy quote

• It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes you hate humanity - but when you see people at their work they elicit respect, whether it's a mechanic, a stonemason or an accountant.

  Alain de Botton

  Beach, Hate, Silly

  5 Copy quote

• I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.

  Alain de Botton

  Writing, Trying, Attention

  9 Copy quote

• Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design. It is an example expressed through materials of the same tendencies which in other domains will lead us to marry the wrong people, choose inappropriate jobs and book unsuccessful holidays: the tendency not to understand who we are and what will satisfy us.

  Alain de Botton

  Jobs, Book, Holiday

  5 Copy quote

• At the beginning of human history, as we struggled to light fires and to chisel fallen trees into rudimentary canoes, who could have predicted that long after we had managed to send men to the moon and areoplanes to Australasia, we would still have such trouble knowing how to tolerate ourselves, forgive our loved ones, and apologise for our tantrums?

  Alain de Botton

  Moon, Men, Light

  4 Copy quote

• 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).

  Alain de Botton

  Museums, Secular Society, Ideas

  5 Copy quote

• If cynicism and love lie at opposite ends of a spectrum, do we not sometimes fall in love in order to escape the debilitating cynicism to which we are prone? Is there not in every coup de foudre a certain willful exaggeration of the qualities of the beloved, an exaggeration which distracts us from our habitual pessimism and focuses our energies on someone in whom we can believe in a way we have never believed in ourselves?

  Alain de Botton

  Falling In Love, Lying, Believe

  Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.15, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  Alain de Botton

  God, Religious, Intelligent

  5 Copy quote

• Gaffe-focused journalism: revenge of intelligent people who know true evils are out there but lack the access/time to get to them.

  Alain de Botton

  Revenge, Intelligent, True Evil

  Twitter post from Sep 25, 2012

  5 Copy quote

• Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically teaches viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will; that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves.

  Alain de Botton

  Sublime, Bows, Ordinary

  5 Copy quote

• Objectively good spaces to work rarely end up being so; in their faultlessness, quiet and well-equipped studios have a habit of rendering the fear of failure overwhelming. Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way - towards a busy street or terminal - before they run out of their burrows.

  Alain de Botton

  Running, Animal, Space

  5 Copy quote

• The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable.

  Alain de Botton

  Book, Way, Oneself

  5 Copy quote

• Taking architecture seriously therefore makes some singular and strenuous demands upon us...It means conceding that we are inconveniently vulnerable to the colour of our wallpaper and that our sense of purpose may be derailed by an unfortunate bedspread

  Alain de Botton

  Mean, Purpose, Demand

  5 Copy quote

• By travelling across frontiers, on horseback and in the imagination, Montaigne invited us to to exchange local prejudices and the self division they induced for less constraining identities as citizens of the world.

  Alain de Botton

  Self, Imagination, Identity

  "The Consolations of Philosophy". Book by Alain de Botton, 2000.

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Alain de Botton

  Meaningful, Real, Issues

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2008.

  10 Copy quote

• Symons remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him was the idea that they ought somehow, in the normal course of events, to have intuited long before they had finished their degrees, started families, bought houses and risen to the top of law firms - what they should properly be doing with their lives. They were tormented by a residual notion of having through some error or stupidity on their part missed out on their true calling.

  Alain de Botton

  Law, Ideas, Errors

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

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