We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers… Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.
ALAIN DE BOTTONYou normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.
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Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others.
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Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.
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People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.
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As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.
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A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.
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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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Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions.
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Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm… it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly.
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The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can’t accept that.
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Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence; no painting ever captures the whole.
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A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.
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Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities.
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Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn’t know rejection and humiliation so intimately.
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Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.
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