The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do; the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThe mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do; the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.
ALAIN DE BOTTONCynics are – beneath it all – only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWe are not always humiliated by failing; we are humiliated only if we first invest our pride and sense of worth in a given achievement and then do not reach it.
ALAIN DE BOTTONHappiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.
ALAIN DE BOTTONI 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.
ALAIN DE BOTTONIn the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn’t worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there’s no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven’t had a good time, “Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?”
ALAIN DE BOTTONSerious journalists often imagine society is adrift because people don’t know certain things.
ALAIN DE BOTTONOnce I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWe keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.
ALAIN DE BOTTONA ‘good job’ can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWhat I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThe media insists on taking what someone didn’t mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.
ALAIN DE BOTTONPaying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude – not a punishment for making money.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThe 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.
ALAIN DE BOTTONOur 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 BOTTONGood books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own – but that we could never have described on our own.
ALAIN DE BOTTON