black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Don’t despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don’t – surrender to events with hope.

Alain de Botton

I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Challenge Communication Feel Great Idea Time
Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Mauch Sign Taken Understand Understood
Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Almost Cause Comic Conviction Frustration Optimistic Origin Rage
One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Important One Successful Suffer Teach Thing Unexpectedly
The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn’t call.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Call Demonic Instrument Telephone Torture
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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Beautiful Deal Endeavor Feeling Long Love Purchase Response Something Think Way
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

Choice Inevitable Long Loss Need Regret Return Time
It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Acquaintance Acquire Beautiful Dialogue Grief Pain Thing Turn More Value
Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Better Everyone Few Life People Want
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
To one’s enemies: “I hate myself more than you ever could.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Enemy Ever Hate More Myself Own
Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Conviction Disapproval Face Oppose Philosophy Rational Supply
In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Devotion Religion replace Reverence Secular Touchstone World
Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn’t know rejection and humiliation so intimately.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Believe Dangerous Immediate Invulnerable Reject Ridiculous Sex
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
Social media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people who have nothing in common except that you’re human.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Benefit Community Compare Interest Media Religious Social

Don’t despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don’t – surrender to events with hope.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Don’t despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don’t – surrender to events with hope.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Alain de Botton Quotes