How do the stems connect to the roots?’ ‘Where is the mist coming from?’ ‘Why does one tree seem darker than another?’ These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.
ALAIN DE BOTTONIn the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn’t worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there’s no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven’t had a good time, “Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?”
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one-that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life.
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To one’s enemies: “I hate myself more than you ever could.
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Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.
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Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.
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Maturity: knowing where you’re crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.
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What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?
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Most of what makes a book ‘good’ is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
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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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The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.
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It’s as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you’re living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.
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It’s hard loving those who don’t much like themselves: “If you’re so great, why would you think I’m so great.
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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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Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.
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Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
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Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude – not a punishment for making money.
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