black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.

Alain de Botton

We 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 BOTTON

Achievement Always Fall First Humiliate Invest Price Sense Worth
The best cure for one’s bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Action Another Bad Best Cure Person Tendency
What should worry us is not the number of people that oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Good Number Oppose People Reason Worry
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
The more closely we analyze what we consider ‘sexy,’ the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Analyze Clearly Closely Consider Eroticism Excitement Feel More Understand
Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Abbreviation Account Artistic Force Involve Reality Serve
These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Activity Elevate Entrepreneur Force Formulation Ide Intent Inventor Vision World
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
Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Act Best Most Revenge Victory Way
Good sex isn’t just fun, it keeps us sane and happy. Having sex with someone makes us feel wanted, alive and potent.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Alive Fum Good Happy Just Keep Potent Sane Sex Wanted
A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Archive Enough Ordinary Strive Virtuous Wisdom
We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Demonic Present Secular Society Struggle Unpleasant Virtue
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 BOTTON

Audience Big Compell Truth Vital
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
There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Devilishly Direct Idea Nervous Prospect Relationship Significance Think
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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Emotional End Feeling Married People Powerful Uncertain

The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Alain de Botton Quotes