Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves.
ALAIN DE BOTTONAll tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer’s words, to turn pain into knowledge.
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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.
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Most good thinking has its origin in fear.
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The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
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One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.
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Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.
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People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.
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There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
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The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.
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We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers… Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.
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Newspapers are being read all around. The point is not, of course, to glean new information, but rather to coax the mind out of its sleep-induced introspective temper.
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Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own – but that we could never have described on our own.
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A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.
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Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.
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What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
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