to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap
ALAIN DE BOTTONOur greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.
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One’s doing well if age improves even slightly one’s capacity to hold on to that vital truism: “This too shall pass.
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Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.
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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.
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To one’s enemies: “I hate myself more than you ever could.
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The good parent: someone who doesn’t mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
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A good half of the art of living is resilience.
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Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm… it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly.
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Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.
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When work is not going well, it’s useful to remember that our identities stretch beyond what is on the business card, that we were people long before we became workers – and will continue to be human once we have put our tools down forever.
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Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.
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We should read other people’s books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer’s thought that help us to do so.
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We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
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Bad art might be defined as a series of bad choices about what to show and what to leave out.
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Cynics are – beneath it all – only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
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