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 BOTTONThe only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, “Don’t you worry about being called names?” retorted, “Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?
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I went to church and couldn’t swallow it. The music was nice but I don’t belong there.
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The challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other’s smartphone.
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The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
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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.
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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.
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Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
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Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.
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Politics is so difficult, it’s generally only people who aren’t quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.
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Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.
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Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.
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Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as ‘doing nothing’.
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The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.
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Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
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Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
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