black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

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
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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Define Every Adult Great Love Quest Sexual Story
One’s doing well if age improves even slightly one’s capacity to hold on to that vital truism: “This too shall pass.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Age Capacity Do Hold Improve One Pass Shall Slightly
We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like; we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Close Envy Feel Friend Group Member Ourselves Reference
I went to church and couldn’t swallow it. The music was nice but I don’t belong there.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Belong Church Music Nice Swallow
You need a long hard day’s work to reveal the logic of the craving for very bad tv and alcohol.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Alcohol Day Hard Logic Long Need Reveal
There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Annoy Learn Look Most People Significant Thing
Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Achieve Band Faculty Job Make Narrow Personality Reduce Change Relentless Round
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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Being Business Card Go Remember Useful Well Work
Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own – but that we could never have described on our own.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anxiety Apprehend Book Continuous Dangerous Emotion Enjoy Finger Gloom Good
Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Better Everyone Few Life People Want
What kills us isn’t one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can’t turn down for fear of disappointing others.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Disappoint Kill Obligation Other Thing Thousand
In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer’s words, to turn pain into knowledge.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Art Different Help Knowledge Pain People Philosophy Way Word
In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Belief Complex Evidence Man Oasis Palm Thirsty Tree Water
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 BOTTON

Already Behaviour Design Force Mechanism Ourselves Patiently Unlearn
Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place; our anxiety over losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the shutter.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anxiety Assuage Beauty Lose Photograph Place Possession Precious Sparkle Take

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Alain de Botton Quotes