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Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as ‘doing nothing’.

Alain de Botton

It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Book Console Perhaps Sad
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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Book Help Hope Order Other People Reckless
Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Allow Call Continuous Conversation Dead Make Misuse Opportunity Period Presence Rhythm
The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Depend Happy Look Only Realise Thing Way
The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others’ appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Affiche Appraisal Attention Congenital Determine Matter People Uncertainty
We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Crowd Inside Newspaper Raed Stuff Tale Weird
The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Dependent Derive Destination Journey Mindset More Pleasure
to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Already Behaviour Design Force Mechanism Ourselves Patiently Unlearn
Work is most fulfilling when you’re at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Comfortable Do Edge Excite Fulfill Quite Work
Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Before Blend Define Joy Melancholy Perfection Sadness Sear
The problem isn’t so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Embed Everyday Find Good Practice Problem
If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest – in all its ardour and paradoxes – than our travels.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Activity Dominate Dynamic Few Happiness Live Paradox Perhaps Quest Search
The finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Another Disloyalty Everyone Finest Loyalty Monstrous Proof Toward
One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Appreciate Cause Flaw Grateful Major Unhappiness
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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Compare Crucial Expectation Keep Mould Other Response Temper World
Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anger Bitterness Came Forget

Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as ‘doing nothing’.

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Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as ‘doing nothing’.

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Popular Authors

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