Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
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
Someone
Longing
May
Response
Trying
Sleep
Something
Feeling
Unimaginative
Way
Fact
Endeavoring
Love
Feelings
Excites
Think
Facts
Purchase
Thinking
Beautiful
Dealing
More quotes by Alain de Botton
One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.
Alain de Botton
Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.
Alain de Botton
Happiness may be difficult to obtain. The obstacles are not primarily financial.
Alain de Botton
what we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistenly available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding onto. (p123) Architecture of Happiness
Alain de Botton
The universe is large and we are tiny, without the need for further religious superstructure. One can have so-called spiritual moments without belief in the spirit.
Alain de Botton
What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?
Alain de Botton
We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.
Alain de Botton
An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths - by panicked shouting.
Alain de Botton
The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
Alain de Botton
How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?
Alain de Botton
The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
Alain de Botton
On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community we live in. We tend to become good or bad depending on the cues sent out within a particular space.
Alain de Botton
The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.
Alain de Botton
The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.
Alain de Botton
Though debts are condemned in the financial world, the world of friendship and love may perversely depend on well-managed debts.
Alain de Botton
We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.
Alain de Botton
I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.
Alain de Botton
Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, Don't you worry about being called names? retorted, Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?
Alain de Botton
One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
Alain de Botton
The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.
Alain de Botton