When work is not going well, it’s useful to remember that our identities stretch beyond what is on the business card, that we were people long before we became workers – and will continue to be human once we have put our tools down forever.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWe 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.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
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We should read other people’s books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer’s thought that help us to do so.
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We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like; we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.
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Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.
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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
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People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.
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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.
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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.
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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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Maturity: knowing where you’re crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.
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One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?
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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 are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.
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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.
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Envy: a confused, tangled guide to one’s own ambitions.
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