Alain de Botton Quotes - Page 13

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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.

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• The pre-scientific age, whatever its deficiencies, had at least offered its members the peace of mind that follows from knowing all man-made achievements to be nothing next to the grandeur of the universe. We, more blessed in our gadgetry but less humble in our outlook, have been left... having no more compelling repository of veneration than our brilliant, precise, blinkered and morally troubling fellow human beings.

  Alain de Botton

  Blessed, Humble, Men

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

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• We feel something, and reach out for the nearest phrase or hum with which to communicate, but which fails to do justice to what has induced us to do so....We stay on the outside of our impressions, as if staring at them through a frosted window, superficially related to them, yet estranged from whatever has eluded casual definition.

  Alain de Botton

  Justice, Phrases, Definitions

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• We tend to believe in the modern secular world that if you tell someone something once, they'll remember it. ... Religions go, "Nonsense. You need to keep repeating the lesson 10 times a day. So get on your knees and repeat it." That's what all religions tell us: "Get on your knees and repeat it 10 or 20 or 15 times a day." Otherwise our minds are like sieves.

  Alain de Botton

  Believe, Mind, Needs

  "Atheism 2.0". TED conference, www.ted.com. July 2011.

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• 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

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• The architects who benefit us most maybe those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius in order to devote themselves to assembling graceful but predominantly unoriginal boxes. Architecture should have the confidence and the kindness to be a little boring.

  Alain de Botton

  Kindness, Order, Should Have

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• Man seems merely dust postponed: the sublime as an encounter - pleasurable, intoxicating, even - with human weakness in the face of strength, age and size of the universe.

  Alain de Botton

  Men, Dust, Sublime

  Alain de Botton (2003). “The Art of Travel”, p.89, Penguin UK

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• what we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistenly available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding onto." (p123) Architecture of Happiness

  Alain de Botton

  Home, Self, Important

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• Differ though we might with Christianity's view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis, which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one-that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life.

  Alain de Botton

  Religious, Atheist, Journey

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• Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is in front of our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, new thoughts new places. Introspective reflections which are liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape. The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do.

  Alain de Botton

  Moving, Eye, Reflection

  Alain de Botton (2003). “The Art of Travel”, p.32, Penguin UK

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• It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings in the darkness which religions have explored. This is a particular priority for secular Americans, perhaps the most anxious and disappointed people on earth, for their nation infuses them with the most extreme hopes about what they may be able to achieve in their working lives and relationships.

  Alain de Botton

  Atheist, People, Priorities

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• to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap

  Alain de Botton

  Believe, Mean, Light

  Alain de Botton (2007). “The Architecture of Happiness”, p.121, Penguin UK

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• When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.

  Alain de Botton

  World, Proust, Scene

  Alain de Botton (2012). “How Proust Can Change Your Life”, p.164, Pan Macmillan

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• When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.

  Alain de Botton

  Children, Father, Grew Up

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• The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.

  Alain de Botton

  Destiny, Stronger, Longing

  Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.10, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.

  Alain de Botton

  Heart, Ideas, Effort

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

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• The assumption is that life doesn't need to be navigated with lessons. You can just do it intuitively. After all, you only need to achieve autonomy from your parents, find a moderately satisfying job, form a relationship, perhaps raise some children, watch the onset of mortality in your parents' generation and eventually in your own, until one day a fatal illness starts gnawing at your innards and you calmly go to the grave, shut the coffin and are done with the self-evident business of life.

  Alain de Botton

  Jobs, Children, Self

  "In defence of self-help books" by Alain de Botton, www.theguardian.com. May 17, 2012.

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• If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination.

  Alain de Botton

  Art, Imagination, World

  Alain de Botton (2003). “The Art of Travel”, p.13, Penguin UK

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• Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm... it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly.

  Alain de Botton

  Art, Feelings, Might

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• We don't exist unless there is someone who can see us existing, what we say has no meaning until someone can understand, while to be surrounded by friends is constantly to have our identity confirmed; their knowledge and care for us have the power to pull us from our numbness. In small comments, many of them teasing, they reveal they know our foibles and except them and so, in turn, accept that we have a place in the world.

  Alain de Botton

  Numbness, Identity, World

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

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• Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.

  Alain de Botton

  Reality, Abbreviations, Artistic

  Alain de Botton (2003). “The Art of Travel”, p.13, Penguin UK

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