The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.
Alain de Botton
Related
It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are humiliated by what is powerful and mean, but awed by what is powerful and noble.
ALAIN DE BOTTON For every question, there is an answer.
Where everybody fails is by asking the wrong question.
RICHARD DIAZ My books are about ordinary people placed in extraordinary situations who are able to draw upon thei...
VIKAS SWARUP Life is not a game. Still, in this life, we choose the games we live to play.
J.R. RIM The need for Mystery is greater than the need for an answer.
KEN KESEY Life is a desire!
DEYTH BANGER Experience fails to teach where there is no desire to learn.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery in...
KEN KESEY The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery in...
KEN KESEY The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery in...
KEN KESEY In our desire for eternal life we pray for an eternity of our habit and comfort, forgetting that imm...
RABINDRANATH TAGORE Under no circumstances should doodling be eradicated from a classroom or a boardroom or even the war...
SUNNI BROWN No matter how much we try to run away from this thirst for the answer to life, for the meaning of li...
RAVI ZACHARIAS But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question.
THOMAS MERTON Do not worry when situations get bitter. A bitter situation is a better teacher. The greatest lesson...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Mankind's feeling of responsibility to create a decent life and make it worth living with dignit...
TAWAKKOL KARMAN We have all fought for our lives
more than we know,
survived our own questions.
ANDREA GIBSON We were the letters sent to the wrong address,
but opened anyway.
ANDREA GIBSON There's a need for accepting responsibility - for a person's life and making choices that are not ju...
BUZZ ALDRIN I look for something that is highly unusual, involving ordinary people caught in extraordinary situa...
WALTER LORD They did the right thing by every dying person who yearns for peace and comfort and dignity and choi...
BARBARA LEE They did the right thing by every dying person who yearns for peace and comfort and dignity and choi...
BARBARA COOMBS LEE Our comfort in theological traditions should never usurp our desire for spiritual Truth. If we vigor...
JASON VERSEY Life is a series of sales situations, and the answer is no if you don't ask.
PATRICIA FRIPP The Big 12 is a physical conference, so I just need to get stronger, ... Coming out of high school, ...
MARIO CHALMERS There's a need for accepting responsibility - for a person's life and making choices that ar...
BUZZ ALDRIN In the ordinary church, it is suppressed by respectability, by a desire to appear better than we rea...
E. STANLEY JONES To enrich the experience of life, we need more challenges than comfort.
DEBASISH MRIDHA For both mice and men, social status is important; for mice, losing to a dominant mouse usually mean...
THOMAS INSEL (All the grief she had suffered over her lifetime had moulded her face into a mask of eternal sadnes...
JEAN SASSON Never fear failure if any endeavour is taken.Desire for success should be greater than your fear of ...
DR ANIL KUMAR SINHA Don't wait for extraordinary circumstance to do good; try to use ordinary situations.
CHARLES RICHTER Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI Self-sacrifice is never entirely unselfish, for the giver never fails to receive.
DOLORES E. MCGUIRE High-level, big-deal publicity has a way of getting old for me, but what never fails to thrill me is...
JOSEPH BARBERA Every one of the police department and the sheriffs department people need to come have a place wher...
MIKE OAKLAND Desire for approval and recognition is a healthy motive, but the desire to be acknowledged as better...
ALBERT EINSTEIN The desire for comfort, pleasure and power is natural_ but accepting to confess, be persecuted and t...
KIMTO OCHE EMMANUEL These philosophically fun ideas usually satisfy nobody. Nonetheless, they remind us that ignorance i...
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good; try to use ordinary situations.
JEAN PAUL RICHTER For those trying to protect the past, it is a way of retaining power, status, money, a way a life, p...
BRAD FELD The best thing you can do for your kids is to show them God working in you on a daily basis.
CRAIG GROESCHEL My main source for faith-based stuff is mostly the Bible, and a childhood with a much, much higher-t...
JIM BUTCHER Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good action; try to use ordinary situations.
SAM RAYBURN Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good action; try to use ordinary situations.
JEAN PAUL RICHTER Don't wait for extraordinary circumstance to do good; try to use ordinary situations.
CHARLES FRANCIS RICHTER Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good action; try to use ordinary situations.
JEAN PAUL I don't define lust as anything evil or nasty. Lust as defined by me, is the feeling of desire: a de...
C. JOYBELL C. If you want to marry me, here's what you'll have to do:
You must learn how to make a perfect ch...
SHEL SILVERSTEIN For both mice and men, social status is important; for mice, losing to a dominant mouse usually mean...
NATIONAL INSTITUTE We never ask for documentation. Our mission is to help anyone in need of service, regardless of thei...
GUSTAVO TORRES The thing for me is I never had this burning desire to do a solo record my whole life.
JULIAN CASABLANCAS Not," Swift said firmly, "for all the tea in China."
"That expression has never made sense to m...
LISA KLEYPAS ...for you know that soft is stronger than hard, water stronger than rock, love stronger than force....
HERMANN HESSE I had spent time in New York, where I loved the idea that theater could be done up in tiny little ro...
GARRY HYNES Desire, burning desire, is basic to achieving anything beyond the ordinary.
JOSEPH B. WIRTHLIN Wake every morning with the same feeling. Live up high and fly on top of the ceiling. I just know th...
ANA CLAUDIA ANTUNES Life is not a matter of place, things or comfort; rather, it concerns the basic human rights of fami...
IMELDA MARCOS A man's desire is for the woman, but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the m...
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE A man’s desire is for the woman, but the woman’s desire is rarely other than for the desire of t...
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE It was a morning for Ella Fitzgerald. There are fine things in the world, after all. Dignity, refine...
DAVID MITCHELL One of the greatest disconnects for this generation is how life and work fit together. There is a ne...
DAVID KINNAMAN Have & Have Not
SAVAN SOLANKI Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealist...
ANAïS NIN I think that many people will intentionally overlook all of the lifeless facts about their relations...
C. JOYBELL C. For no continuity of social act is possible without a corresponding social status and the many diffe...
KENNETH BURKE A child's appetite for new toys appeal to the desire for ownership and appropriation: the appeal...
CHRISTOPHER LASCH Spa is a great track! I've got memories of some adventures there, though it's never been lucky for m...
JACQUES VILLENEUVE Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentabl...
GEORGE SANTAYANA Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentabl...
GEORGE SANTAYANA What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort
Of being strangers, at least to o...
MARK STRAND The RAD system is not for the weak at heart, or the conscientious objector. Our system is specifical...
LAWRENCE N. NADEAU What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning.
CHARLIE CHAPLIN Where there is no power... there is never any desire to do a thing; and where there is strong desire...
WALLACE D. WATTLES Are you willing to believe that love is the strongest thing in the world - stronger than hate, stron...
HENRY VAN DYKE The wolf is a hot-button species. It never fails to ignite passions, either for or against.
ROLF PETERSON The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. He is the...
HENRY WARD BEECHER Human beings, whatever their backgrounds, are more open than we think, that their behavior cannot be...
HOWARD ZINN In fighting situation Keep yourself stronger than the circumstances with courage & determination.We ...
DR ANIL KUMAR SINHA About every six to eight months, I run into a man who astounds me sexually, but between escapades, I...
SUE GRAFTON In humans (and humans alone), sexuality is embodied in desire--in the primordial desire for life-as-...
CHRISTOS YANNARAS The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. He is a h...
HENRY WARD BEECHER We are not made for the mountains, for sunrises, or for the other beautiful attractions in life - th...
OSWALD CHAMBERS Only the basic situations in life occur only once, never to return. For a man to be a man, he must b...
MILAN KUNDERA We come together, we create our families, we chose our mates out of the desire to form a life togeth...
YASMINE GALENORN No passion is stronger in the breast of a man than the desire to make others believe as he believes....
VIRGINIA WOOLF If we all took a minute to reflect upon the wrong we do we would be quite surprised or shocked.Inste...
GARY F EVANS... Ants can carry twenty times their own body weight, which is useful information if you're moving out ...
RON DARIAN The man I am today it's not the man of yesterday
CHRISTOPHER FUDGE is a broken man an outlaw?"
"More or less." Brienne answered.
Septon Meribald ...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN The summer sun continued to rise in the sky and propel shocks of heat down on the city and the heavy...
HUBERT SELBY JR. He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole...
PAUL TILLICH for the majority of instances where money is desired for the admitted object of blessing others, the...
JAMES ALLEN I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES Again, I am surprised why people seek to eliminate lust and cling to love; as they wish to ignore ha...
C. JOYBELL C. Never accept "NO." for an answer, Things change daily, perceptions, situations and peoples minds, so...
GEORGE M. ETHERIDGE What do I look for in a friend?
You!
ANTHONY T.HINCKS The struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma is a struggle for life and dignity. It is a str...
AUNG SUU The struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma is a struggle for life and dignity. It is a str...
AUNG SAN SUU KYI
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ALAIN DE BOTTON Atheism is having a heyday in the born-again United States.
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ALAIN DE BOTTON Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuou...
ALAIN DE BOTTON One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
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ALAIN DE BOTTON In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn
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ALAIN DE BOTTON It's almost a blessing when we meet people who naturally want to do the sort of things that are ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes yo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Small issues are really just large ones that haven't been accorded the requisite attention.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Fantasies can be great, but we shouldn't make the wedding a fantasy, because the wedding is the ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Most of the time, we make discoveries about how difficult people are at the moment when the difficul...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The thing is that love gives us a ringside seat on somebody else's flaws, so of course you'r...
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ALAIN DE BOTTON Laughter is an important part of a good relationship. It's an immense achievement when you can m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "lu...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We tend to think of philosophies as produced by professional philosophers. Traditionally, this has m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The romantic person instinctively sees marriage in terms of emotions, but what a couple actually get...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
ALAIN DE BOTTON What makes people good communicators is, in essence, an ability not to be fazed by the more problema...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which th...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Parents don't reveal how often they have bitten their tongue, fought back the tears, or been too...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The humanities have been forced to disguise, both from themselves and their students, why their subj...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I assemble my ideas in pieces on a computer file, then gradually find a place for them on a piece of...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Sometimes my biography is interpreted as the upbringing of a French aristocrat. It was very, very di...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
ALAIN DE BOTTON The more people you have to ask for permission, the more dangerous a project gets.
ALAIN DE BOTTON What annoys me about most self-help books is that they have no tragic sense. They have no sense that...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
ALAIN DE BOTTON The start receives such disproportionate attention because it isn't deemed to be just one phase amon...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
ALAIN DE BOTTON If you are pro love, you have to be a little bit disloyal to the romantic feelings that propel you i...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The number one person who needs my books is me. I'm not some sort of disinterested guru who has ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Parents become very good at not hearing the explicit words and listening instead to what the child m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Secular thinkers have a separation between thinking and doing. They don't have a grasp of the ba...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I waste most of the day, then finally start to write around 3 P.M., totally disgusted with myself fo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We have to put aside the customary historical reading of works of art in order to invite art to resp...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I remember going to university, and the people who'd left home for the first time looked at the ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Everyone's more vulnerable than they seem, and I think men are more vulnerable. Once you get clo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON At 'The School of Life', we take seriously anything that has to do with human fulfilment - a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A city like London is sociable in a sense that there are people gathering in bars and restaurants, c...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON As for despair, it comes about when I have been a fool and hate myself and despair of my personality...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Therapy and counseling can do wonderful things for people. But they have emerged so far as what are ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The idea that one might use art for 'instrumental' reasons tends to set off alarm bells at t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are never through with the requirement for acceptance. This isn't a curse limited to the inadequa...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentia...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - tha...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day-to-day take on things. The bare fa...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich peo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two p...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Katie Price is no exception. She, too, is - in a distinctive way - a philosopher. Partially, Katie P...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Used to do a lot of falling in love with people, almost in the street, and imagining that there woul...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Le Corbusier is an outstanding writer. His ideas achieved their impact in large measure because he c...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Since the beginning of the 20th century, the public's relationship to art has been weakened by a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There's a certain kind of insular, old-fashioned, upper-class Britishness that gives me the spoo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON After Carol had left, as Symons threw away a pile of used tissues and rearranged the cushions on the...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I've had my successes and failures. I know many academics in my field loathe me. I've come t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere - and I really don't get on with mach...
ALAIN DE BOTTON For thousands of years, it had been nature--and its supposed creator--that had had a monopoly on awe...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom
we know nothing. Romances...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A person cannot be at once a libertine and a married Romantic, however compelling both paradigms mig...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the inferiors of the virgin land they have repla...
ALAIN DE BOTTON What we typically call love is only the start of love. Our understanding of love has been hijacked a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON On account of its scale and complexity, the world will always outstrip the capacity of any single bo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writer...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Emotional life is - alongside work - one of the great challenges of existence and is a theme that I ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once (we soon feel ungrateful) or tho...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were w...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There are few more effective ways to promote tolerance between suspicious neighbours than to force t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There's a constant tension between the excitement of new people and security with one person. If...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never sav...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There is no one more likely to destroy us than the person we marry.
ALAIN DE BOTTON The challenge lies in knowing how to bring this sort of day to a close. His mind has been wound to a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Many people in the intellectual elite are very scared of shouting. They insist on very quiet murmurs...
ALAIN DE BOTTON as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status an...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Far from rejecting outright any hierarchy of success or failure, philosophy instead reconfigures the...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is according to how we are able to answer the question of what we do (normally the first enquiry ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the statu...
ALAIN DE BOTTON People who hold important positions in society are commonly labelled "somebodies," and their inverse...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There is a danger of developing a blanket distaste for modern life which could have its attractions ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire li...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
ALAIN DE BOTTON When does a job feel meaningful? Whenever it allows us to generate delight or reduce suffering in ot...
ALAIN DE BOTTON One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A good half of the art of living is resilience.
ALAIN DE BOTTON ...workplace dynamics are no less complicated or unexpectedly intense than family relations, with on...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are humiliated by what is powerful and mean, but awed by what is powerful and noble.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Literature has always had its circus side, its freaks and its frivolities - and maybe that's all par...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I love the idea of a university as away from capitalist values, where people can do things that don&...
ALAIN DE BOTTON What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent techno...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is one of the unexpected disasters of the modern age that our new unparalleled access to informat...
ALAIN DE BOTTON In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Blind impatience is equally evident in the fruit section. Our ancestors might have delighted in the ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surren...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t al...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who w...
ALAIN DE BOTTON In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Snobbery exists in all areas of life, not least literary criticism. By snobbery I mean, any method o...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to h...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I've tried to write about Heathrow before and been escorted off the premises.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Because I have this thing about birthdays--they always remind me of death and forced jollity.
ALAIN DE BOTTON He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on p...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The feeling one has no time to get anything done provides the pressure that guarantees one does get ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I'm fascinated by Comte's clear-eyed analysis of what was wrong with modern society, which i...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The most courageous act in politics is to try to understand your opponent.
ALAIN DE BOTTON The idea of a book that can make a change to your life, that can affect your perspective, is a beaut...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The philosophy I love is very selective. It is really just the bit that is involved in a search for ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is hope--with regard to our careers, our love lives, our children, our politicians, and our plane...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actu...
ALAIN DE BOTTON He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity--suggesting that a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There are books that speak to us of our own lives with a clarity we cannot match. They prevent the m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Travel is a lot like love.
ALAIN DE BOTTON What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
ALAIN DE BOTTON I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Learning to give up on perfection may be just about the most romantic move any of us could make.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Work is a way of bringing order to chaos, and there's a basic satisfaction in seeing that we are...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I like working with people. I believe change can only come through collaboration.
ALAIN DE BOTTON I see religion as a storehouse of lots of really good ideas that a secular world should look at, rai...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Rather than getting more spoilt with age, as difficulties pile up, epiphanies of gratitude abound.
ALAIN DE BOTTON For the rest of history, for most of us, our bright promise will always fall short of being actualis...
ALAIN DE BOTTON In 'Art as Therapy', we argue that art is a tool that can variously help to inspire, console...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I was a very un-literary child, which might reassure parents with kids who don't read.
ALAIN DE BOTTON In our more arrogant moments, the sin of pride—or superbia, in Augustine's Latin formulation—tak...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Partially undermining the manufacturer's ability to assert that its work constituted a meaningful co...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis o...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The solution as consumers is - perhaps surprisingly - to take adverts very, very seriously. We shoul...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We don't need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humani...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I think of myself as quite a shy person. But when I'm curious about something, I'll go quite...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Artworks are especially good at helping our psyches in a variety of ways: they rebalance our moods, ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON [T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister th...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Whatever modern democracies may tell themselves about their commitment to free speech and to diversi...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing coun...
ALAIN DE BOTTON To be loved by someone is to realize how much they share the same needs that lie at the heart of our...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as beautiful, intelligent, and...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
ALAIN DE BOTTON A storyteller who provided us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortu...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the const...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpre...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Even if our loved ones have assured us that they will be busy at work, even if they told us they hat...
ALAIN DE BOTTON You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneven...
ALAIN DE BOTTON What a peculiar civilisation this was: inordinately rich, yet inclined to accrue its wealth through ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as in...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We would like to go and see the field that Millet…shows us in his Springtime, we would like Claude...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Our feelings of anxiety are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss, and so need to be ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for maki...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we c...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Nature puts us all in our places. Being made to feel small isn't something we welcome when it's done...
ALAIN DE BOTTON in Flaubert’s eyes, that only entirely illiterate and uneducated Frenchmen now stood a chance of b...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A clean conscience is the preserve of those without sufficient imagination.
ALAIN DE BOTTON In the past, Flaubert implied, idiots had had no clue as to what the carbon structure of diamonds wa...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
ALAIN DE BOTTON But we would do well to meditate daily, rather as the religious do on their God, on the 9.5 trillion...
ALAIN DE BOTTON To a shameful extent, the charm of marriage boils down to how unpleasant it is to be alone. This isn...
ALAIN DE BOTTON One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
ALAIN DE BOTTON What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books written bec...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Unrequited love may be painful, but it is safely painful, because it does not involve inflicting dam...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Jarenlang kwam ik bij het boodschappen doen langs een huis dat weliswaar een van de lelijkste gebouw...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Snobbery exists in all areas of life, not least literary criticism. By snobbery I mean, any method o...
ALAIN BOTTON Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writer...
ALAIN BOTTON I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - tha...
ALAIN BOTTON I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day-to-day take on things. The bare fa...
ALAIN BOTTON