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Alain de Botton Quotes - Page 7

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The finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.

The finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.

Alain de Botton
Loyalty, Finest, Proof

A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.

Alain de Botton
Successful, Exciting, Interest

Someone who has thought rationally and deeply about how the body works is likely to arrive at better ideas about how to be healthy than someone who has followed a hunch. Medicine presupposes a hierarchy between the confusion the layperson will be in about what is wrong with him, and the more accurate knowledge available to doctors reasoning logically. At the heart of Epicureanism is the thought that we are as bad at answering the question "What will make me happy?" as "What will make me healthy?" Our souls do not spell out their troubles.

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

Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.

Alain de Botton
Bitterness
Twitter post from Jun 13, 2014

In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn't worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there's no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven't had a good time, "Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?"

Alain de Botton
Successful, Years, Two

In reality, the likelihood of reaching the pinnacle of capitalist society today is only marginally better than were the chances of being accepted into the French nobility four centuries ago, though at least an aristocratic age was franker, and therefore kinder, about the odds. It did not relentlessly play up the possibilities open to all, and so, in turn, did not cruelly equate an ordinary life with a failed one.

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

I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.

Alain de Botton
Believe, Argument, Presenting

Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.

Alain de Botton
Happiness, Emotional, Expression
"On anticipation". www.theguardian.com. May 21, 2002.

Bad art might be defined as a series of bad choices about what to show and what to leave out.

Alain de Botton
Art, Choices, Might

When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.

Alain de Botton
Motivation, Inspiration, Moon

We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.

Alain de Botton
People, Looks, Attention
Alain de Botton (2001). “The Consolations of Philosophy”, p.60, Penguin UK

Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.

Alain de Botton
Eels, Style, Mind
"The Consolations of Philosophy". Book by Alain de Botton, Chapter III, Consolation For Frustration, 2000.

Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom we know nothing. Romances are never as pure as those we imagine during long train journeys, as we secretly contemplate a beautiful person who is gazing out of the window – a perfect love story interrupted only when the beloved looks back into the carriage and starts up a dull conversation about the excessive price of the on-board sandwiches with a neighbour or blows her nose aggressively into a handkerchief.

Alain de Botton
Beautiful, Falling In Love, Journey
Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.40, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.

Alain de Botton
Home, Mind, Important

Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money.

Alain de Botton
Gratitude, Punishment, Paying Taxes
Twitter post from Sep 23, 2012

Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.

Alain de Botton
Pain, Insomnia, Injury
Twitter post from Sep 18, 2012

You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them.

Alain de Botton
Annoyed, Honour

The problem with clichés is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones...If...we are obliged to create our own language, it is because there are dimensions to ourselves absent from clichés, which require us to flout etiquette in order to convey with greater accuracy the distinctive timbre of our thought.

Alain de Botton
Order, Ideas, Dimensions

We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.

Alain de Botton
Letting Go, Struggle, Secular Society
"Katie Antoniou interviews Alain de Botton on his new book 'Religion for Atheists'". Interview with Katie Antoniou, www.run-riot.com. January 24, 2012.

Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.

Alain de Botton
Optimistic, Frustration, Rage
"The Consolations of Philosophy". Book by Alain de Botton, Chapter III, Consolation For Frustration, 2000.

One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.

Alain de Botton
Falling In Love, Health, Fall

We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.

Alain de Botton
Views, Quality, Divergent
Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.9, Vintage

We need objects to remind us of the commitments we've made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side of ourselves we're in danger of losing touch with. Beautiful furniture gives us something to live up to. All designed objects are propaganda for a way of life.

Alain de Botton
Beautiful, Commitment, Giving

The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren't there. The answers are there in the morning.

Alain de Botton
Morning, Thinking, Mind

It wasn't only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public.

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

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