Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.
Alain de Botton
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Alain de Botton
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Writers
Terrible
Interesting
Happy
Hegel
Also
Kant
Thinkers
Insist
Thinker
More quotes by Alain de Botton
It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.
Alain de Botton
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
Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
Alain de Botton
to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap
Alain de Botton
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.
Alain de Botton
Mental health: having enough safe places in your mind for your thoughts to settle.
Alain de Botton
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.
Alain de Botton
In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.
Alain de Botton
The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.
Alain de Botton
Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
Alain de Botton
Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
Alain de Botton
We may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they're doing it.
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
It's as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you're living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.
Alain de Botton
Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others - because it's a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.
Alain de Botton
Dreams reveal we never quite get 'over' anything: it's all still in there somewhere.
Alain de Botton
We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.
Alain de Botton
All 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.
Alain de Botton
How do the stems connect to the roots?' 'Where is the mist coming from?' 'Why does one tree seem darker than another?' These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.
Alain de Botton
Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
Alain de Botton
