Alain de Botton on bitterness
Alain de Botton234 quotes“Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.”
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A ‘good job’ can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
Alain de BottonAlain de Botton Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as ‘doing nothing’.
Alain de BottonAlain de Botton 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 BottonAlain de Botton All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.
Alain de BottonAlain de Botton When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.
Alain de BottonAlain de Botton 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 BottonAlain de Botton Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
Alain de BottonAlain de Botton Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn’t know rejection and humiliation so intimately.
Alain de BottonAlain de Botton 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 BottonAlain de Botton Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.
Alain de BottonAlain de Botton The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things
Alain de BottonAlain de Botton Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own – but that we could never have described on our own.
Alain de BottonAlain de Botton There’s a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.
Alain de BottonAlain de Botton Yet often, they know but just don’t care. So the task of serious journalism isn’t just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.
Alain de BottonAlain de Botton Those who divorce aren’t necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.
Alain de BottonAlain de Botton People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.
Alain de BottonAlain de Botton
Original quotes
From our community writers
In this wilderness, Mankind is the animal I fear.
Addison SchmittAddison Schmitt The irony is that he broke the only person he never wanted to hurt.
Krishan PandeyKrishan Pandey I will wait, I am waiting, and I will love you with all the love I posses until this body is ash and I begin my search for you again.
Tyler Knott GregsonTyler Knott Gregson Nothing is permanent not even your pain.
Taj AroraTaj Arora Do not insist me to let you go, you come half hearted like a crescent moon, and you go heart-filled like a full moon which glows.
Nikita GandhiNikita Gandhi I want to fold you into my book, like a petal, so that you’d never leave.
Mira R. AridiMira R. Aridi It seems strange how we look in the same mirror, yet what stares back, is so painfully different.
Chris AllchinChris Allchin Do not measure yourself by success, failure, or a degree. Measure your life by the dreams you have.
Natalie MooneyNatalie Mooney
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More on bitterness
Worry is not believing God will get it right, and bitterness is believing God got it wrong.
Timothy KellerTimothy Keller We have known the bitterness of defeat and the exultation of triumph, and from both we have learned there can be no turning back. We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war. A new era is upon us.
Douglas MacArthurDouglas MacArthur I address you with neither rancor nor bitterness in the fading twilight of life, with but one purpose in mind: to serve my country. The issues are global and so interlocked that to consider the problems of one sector, oblivious to those of another, is but to court disaster for the whole.
Douglas MacArthurDouglas MacArthur I don’t feel bitterness, I don’t feel anger towards anybody. Fighting is never emotional to me.
Conor McGregorConor McGregor We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers… Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.
Alain de BottonAlain de Botton He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.
Alain de BottonAlain de Botton I have loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.
Agnes SmedleyAgnes Smedley One can’t measure the life with its bitterness but with it’s sweetness and sweetness is what one must find in Jesus Words.
Aftab AlamAftab Alam
