black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.

Alain de Botton

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
To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Concern Flourish Listen Love Note Object Ourselves Presence Register Shown View
Politics is so difficult, it’s generally only people who aren’t quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Convince Difficult Feel Generally Only People Politics Quite Task
It looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is actually the ultimate time-saver – because it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you years, decades, millennia to try to experience directly.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Access Emotion Like Literature Look Range Saver Time Ultimate Waste
There are selections so acute that they come to define a place, with the result that we can no longer travel through that landscape without being reminded of what a great artist noticed there.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Acute Come Define Landscape Longer Place Result Selection Travel
We don’t really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped … We suffer, therefore we think.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anything Hope Learn Pain Properly Something Suffer
As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Built Matter Record Write
William James once made an acute point about the relationship between happiness and expectation. He argued that satisfaction with ourselves does not require us to succeed in every endeavour.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Acute Between Endeavour Expectation Happiness Made Point Relationship
The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Admit Anticipation Fear Inability Leave Lie Memory Position Present Shelter
The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Normal Very Only People Think Well
Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Above Creature Descendant Happiness Impossible Longer Minute Worry
Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Different Everyone Ourselves Return Sense Think
Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Eat Force People Promote Together Tolerance
Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Conviction Disapproval Face Oppose Philosophy Rational Supply
Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Happy Instant Interest Terrible Think Writer
There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Choice Inevitable Long Loss Need Regret Return Time

Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Alain de Botton Quotes