Alain de Botton Quotes - Page 9

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• All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.

  Alain de Botton

  People, Waiting, Humiliation

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• The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that.

  Alain de Botton

  Philosophy, Writing, Sadness

  "Alain de Botton: a life in writing". Interview with Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. January 20, 2012.

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• Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.

  Alain de Botton

  Song, Home, Garden

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

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• Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?

  Alain de Botton

  Joy, Remarkable, Ifs

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

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• It's hard loving those who don't much like themselves: "If you're so great, why would you think I'm so great.

  Alain de Botton

  Thinking, Self Hatred, Hard

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• It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.

  Alain de Botton

  Beautiful, Beautiful Things, Receptive

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• The universe is large and we are tiny, without the need for further religious superstructure. One can have so-called spiritual moments without belief in the spirit.

  Alain de Botton

  God, Spiritual, Religious

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• Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.

  Alain de Botton

  Desire, May, Littles

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.43, Vintage

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• According to one influential wing of modern secular society there are few more disreputable fates than to end up being 'like everyone else' for 'everyone else' is a category that comprises the mediocre and the conformist, the boring and the suburban. The goal of all right-thinking people should be to mark themselves off from the crowd and 'stand out' in whatever way their talents allow.

  Alain de Botton

  Fate, Thinking, Secular Society

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• The bourgeois thinkers of the eighteenth century thus turned Aristotle's formula on its head: satisfactions which the Greek philosopher had identified with leisure were now transposed to the sphere of work, while tasks lacking in any financial reward were drained of all significance and left to the haphazard attentions of decadent dilettantes. It now seemed as impossible that one could be happy and unproductive as it had once seemed unlikely that one could work and be human.

  Alain de Botton

  Greek, Rewards, Leisure

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

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• Rather than teasing the buyers, we may blame the society in which they lived for setting up a situation where the purchase of ornate cabinets felt psychologically necessary and rewarding, where respect was dependent on baroque displays. Rather than a tale of greed, the history of luxury could more accurately be read as a record of emotional trauma. It is the legacy of those who have felt pressured by the disdain of others to add an extraordinary amount to their bare selves in order to signal that they too may lay a claim to love.

  Alain de Botton

  Emotional, Luxury, Self

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.82, Vintage

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• Rather than saying 'I hate mess', it might draw more compassion to say, 'mess terrifies me as a harbinger of catastrophe'.

  Alain de Botton

  Hate, Compassion, Might

  Twitter post from Feb 24, 2013

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• There are people who say, 'Oh this guy is quite thick.' I think the reason is that, increasingly, I don't mind being simple in terms of literary expression. Others say, 'No, no, no. He went to Cambridge. He got a good degree. He must be Einstein.'

  Alain de Botton

  Simple, Thinking, Expression

  "Alain de Botton: 'My father was physically quite violent... he would destroy the house'" by Robert Chalmers, www.independent.co.uk. March 25, 2012.

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• 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.

  Alain de Botton

  Glasses, Understanding, Hurtful

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

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• It would scarcely be acceptable, for example, to ask in the course of an ordinary conversation what our society holds to be the purpose of work.

  Alain de Botton

  Ordinary, Example, Purpose

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

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• Happiness may be difficult to obtain. The obstacles are not primarily financial.

  Alain de Botton

  May, Obstacles, Financial

  "The Consolations of Philosophy". Book by Alain de Botton, Chapter II, Consolation For Not having Enough Money, 2000.

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• 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.

  Alain de Botton

  Mind, New Work, Culture

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• Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know whether or not it was funny.

  Alain de Botton

  Book, Writing, Years

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• To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.

  Alain de Botton

  Humanity, Looks, Ears

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

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• Many moments in religion seem attractive to me even though I can't believe in any of it.

  Alain de Botton

  Believe, Moments, Attractive

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• The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.

  Alain de Botton

  Desire, Stronger, Comfort

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.250, Vintage

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• Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the status hierarchy; they have attemptee, rather, to institute new kinds of hierarchies based on sets of values unrecognised by, and critical of, those of the majority.. They have provided us with persuasive and consoling reminders that there is more than one way of succeeding in life.

  Alain de Botton

  Art, Philosophy, Majority

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• One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us happy.

  Alain de Botton

  Danger, Drawbacks

  Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.72, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Nowhere was the airport's charm more concentrated than on the screens placed at intervals across the terminal which announced, in deliberately workmanlike fonts, the itineraries of aircraft about to take to the skies. These screens implied a feeling of infinite and immediate possibility: they suggested the ease with which we might impulsively approach a ticket desk and, within a few hours, embark for a country where the call to prayer rang out over shuttered whitewashed houses, where we understood nothing of the language and where no one knew our identities.

  Alain de Botton

  Country, Prayer, Airports

  Alain de Botton (2010). “A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary”, p.22, Profile Books

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• An understandable hunger for potential clients tempts many [career counseling therapists] to overpromise, like creative writing teachers who, out of greed or sentimentality, sometimes imply that all of their students could one day produce worthwhile literature, rather than frankly acknowledging the troubling truth, anathema to a democratic society, that the great writer, like the contented worker, remains an erratic and anomalous event, immune to the methods of factory farming.

  Alain de Botton

  Teacher, Writing, Careers

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

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