Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.
ALAIN DE BOTTONOnly as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
-
-
Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
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 -
Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
Work is most fulfilling when you’re at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as ‘doing nothing’.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers – and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone – and finding that that’s ok with them.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer’s words, to turn pain into knowledge.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
The activities of drawing, eating and drinking, all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness from without to within.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
ALAIN DE BOTTON