The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
ALAIN DE BOTTONCuriosity takes ignorance seriously – and is confident enough to admit when it’s in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can’t accept that.
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The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.
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Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.
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Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own – but that we could never have described on our own.
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We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame; just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.
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Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.
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I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or certainly the negative ones.
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When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.
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I went to church and couldn’t swallow it. The music was nice but I don’t belong there.
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As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.
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The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust’s therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.
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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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Dreams reveal we never quite get ‘over’ anything: it’s all still in there somewhere.
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As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers – and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.
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There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
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There is real danger of a disconnect between what’s on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it’s not a disconnect that the world is ready to be patient with.
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One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.
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I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
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Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.
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It’s hard loving those who don’t much like themselves: “If you’re so great, why would you think I’m so great.
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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.
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Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
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Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.
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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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So many complaints boil down to the belly ache of the fragile, mortal, ignored ego in a vast and indifferent universe.
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