Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWe need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Must being in love always mean being in pain?
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The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
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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.
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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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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.
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Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
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Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn’t know rejection and humiliation so intimately.
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Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.
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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.
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Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
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We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability.
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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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Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others – because it’s a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.
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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.
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There is always the option of being emotionally lazy, that is, of quoting.
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