black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.

Alain de Botton

A good half of the art of living is resilience.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Good Half Live Resilience
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
The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren’t there. The answers are there in the morning.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Answer Best Mind Morning Think
Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anger End Fear Feel Most Receive Remember Weakness
We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Angry Cease Hopeful Once
Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Conducive Conversation Few Internal Journey Mindwive Move Place Plane Ship Train
A ‘good job’ can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Devote Enough Entire Good Job Life Practically
I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Challenge Communication Feel Great Idea Time
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
Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Define Every Adult Great Love Quest Sexual Story
It seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us recognise the important things that we are too defeated or embittered to recognise from day to day.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Benefit Brush Disaster Fatal Help Important Recognise Seem Thing
Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Home Merit Name Occupancy Permanent Speak
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
Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system-the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side-they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but can’t afford airtime in a commercialized, status-consciou s, and cynical world.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Act Conscious Cynical Draw Money Object Power World
What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Suppose Think
It wasn’t only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Began Conversation Drunkard Fall Humiliate Public Stranger

Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Alain de Botton Quotes