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 BOTTONPaying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude – not a punishment for making money.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.
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You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
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We are not always humiliated by failing; we are humiliated only if we first invest our pride and sense of worth in a given achievement and then do not reach it.
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Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others – because it’s a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.
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For paranoia about ‘what other people think’ : remember that only some hate, a very few love – and almost all just don’t care.
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We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability.
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Bad art might be defined as a series of bad choices about what to show and what to leave out.
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The finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.
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The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain.
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Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone – and finding that that’s ok with them.
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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.
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Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
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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.
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Social media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people who have nothing in common except that you’re human.
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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.
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