Alain de Botton Quotes - Page 14

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The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.

Alain de Botton

Dream, Believe, Destiny

Alain De Botton (1993). “On Love”, Grove/Atlantic

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Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.

Alain de Botton

Photography, Attention, Done

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Let's say you went to Harvard or Oxford or Cambridge, and you said, 'I've come here because I'm in search of morality, guidance and consolation; I want to know how to live,' - they would show you the way to the insane asylum.

Alain de Botton

Motivation, Inspiration, Oxford

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...if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody.

Alain de Botton

Love, May, Ends

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Her lie was symptomatic of a certain pride she took in mocking the romantic, in being unsentimental, matter-of-fact, stoic; yet at heart she was the oppo site: idealistic, dreamy, giving, and deeply attached to everything she liked verbally to dismiss as "mushy.

Alain de Botton

Lying, Heart, Pride

Alain de Botton (2006). “On Love: A Novel”, p.42, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well.

Alain de Botton

Running, Writing, Envy

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as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.

Alain de Botton

Anxiety, Shifting, Triggers

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The activities of drawing, eating and drinking, all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness from without to within.

Alain de Botton

Drinking, Self, Drawing

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How do the stems connect to the roots?' 'Where is the mist coming from?' 'Why does one tree seem darker than another?' These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.

Alain de Botton

Roots, Tree, Doe

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It is no coincidence that the Western attraction to sublime landscapes developed at precisely the moment when traditional beliefs in God began to wane.

Alain de Botton

Sublime, Religion, Landscape

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Blind impatience is equally evident in the fruit section. Our ancestors might have delighted in the occasional handful of berries found on the underside of a bush in late summer, viewing it as a sign of the unexpected munificence of a divine creator, but we became modern when we gave up on awaiting sporadic gifts from above and sought to render any pleasing sensation immediately and repeatedly available.

Alain de Botton

Summer, Berries, Might

Alain de Botton (2009). “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work”, p.27, Penguin UK

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One wants never to give up this crystalline perspective. One wants to keep counterpositioning home with what one knows of alternative realities, as they exist in Tunis or Hyderabad. One wants never to forget that nothing here is normal, that the streets are different in Wisebaden, and Louyang, that this is just one of many possible worlds.

Alain de Botton

Giving Up, Home, Reality

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It would be foolish to describe the logistics hub as merely ugly, for it has the horrifying, soulless, immaculate beauty characteristic of many of the workplaces of the modern world.

Alain de Botton

Would Be, World, Ugly

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

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We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need — but are at constant risk of forgetting what we need — within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves.

Alain de Botton

Self, Ideas, Risk

Alain de Botton (2007). “The Architecture of Happiness”, p.55, Penguin UK

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It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and frenetic pursuit of wealth.

Alain de Botton

Achievement, Challenges, Ruins

Alain de Botton (2009). “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work”, p.218, Penguin UK

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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.

Alain de Botton

Lonely, Book, Should

Alain de Botton (2003). “The Art of Travel”, p.28, Penguin UK

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Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

Alain de Botton

Ambition, Anxiety, Contemporary

Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.85, Vintage

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Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts.

Alain de Botton

Travel, Journey, Might

Alain de Botton (2003). “The Art of Travel”, p.66, Penguin UK

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We might have been ready to offer sympathy, but in actuality there were stronger reasons to want to congratulate her for having found such a powerful motive to feel sad. We should have envied her for having located someone without whom she so firmly felt she could not survive, beyond the gate let along in a bare student bedroom in a suburb of Rio. If she had been able to view her situation from a sufficient distance, she might have been able to recognise this as one of the high points in her life.

Alain de Botton

Powerful, Distance, Views

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Status Anxiety: A worry, so pernicious as to be capable of ruining extended stretches of our lives, that we are in danger of failing to conform to the ideals of success laid down by our society and that we may as a result be stripped of dignity and respect; a worry that we are currently occupying too modest a rung or are about to fall to a lower one.

Alain de Botton

Happiness, Success, Fall

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Alcohol-inspired fights are a reminder of the price we pay for our daily submission at the altars of prudence and order.

Alain de Botton

Fighting, Order, Alcohol

Alain de Botton (2009). “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work”, p.28, Penguin UK

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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.

Alain de Botton

Art, Majority, Would Be

Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.156, Vintage

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Responsible for wrapping the iron fist of authority in its velvet glove is Jane Axtell, head of the accountancy firm's Human Resources department.

Alain de Botton

Iron, Velvet, Gloves

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

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Year-end financial statements express a truth about office life which is no less irrefutable yet also, in the end, no less irrelevant or irritating than an evolutionary biologist's proud reminder that the purpose of existence lies in the propagation of our genes.

Alain de Botton

Lying, Years, Year End

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

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It seemed an advantage to be traveling alone. Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others...Being closely observed by a companion can also inhibit our observation of others; then, too, we may become caught up in adjusting ourselves to the companion's questions and remarks, or feel the need to make ourselves seem more normal than is good for our curiosity.

Alain de Botton

Company We Keep, Expectations, Curiosity

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Alain de Botton

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Born: December 20, 1969
Occupation: Writer
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