Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as inherent & unbudgeable as those in food.
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
Best
Efforts
Book
Despite
Critics
Taste
Food
Tastes
Probably
Authors
Effort
Inherent
Books
Hopes
More quotes by Alain de Botton
I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at an English prep school. So the way to get round it was to become the school joker, which I did quite effectively - I was always fooling around to make the people who would otherwise dump me in the loo laugh.
Alain de Botton
Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
Alain de Botton
We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.
Alain de Botton
There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed.
Alain de Botton
How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?
Alain de Botton
Out of the millions of people we live among, most of whom we habitually ignore and are ignored by in turn, there are always a few that hold hostage our capacity for happiness, whom we could recognize by their smell alone and whom we would rather die than be without.
Alain de Botton
To cut out every negative root would simultaneously mean choking off positive elements that might arise from it further up the stem of the plant. We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
Alain de Botton
The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable.
Alain de Botton
Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.
Alain de Botton
Never, ever become a writer. It's a nightmare.
Alain de Botton
We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.
Alain de Botton
When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.
Alain de Botton
The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
Alain de Botton
A good half of the art of living is resilience.
Alain de Botton
Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
Alain de Botton
Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?
Alain de Botton
There is psychological pleasure in this takeoff, too, for the swiftness of the plane’s ascent is an exemplary symbol of transformation. The display of power can inspire us to imagine analogous, decisive shifts in our own lives, to imagine that we, too, might one day surge above much that now looms over us.” P. 38-39
Alain de Botton
You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them.
Alain de Botton
Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically teaches viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves.
Alain de Botton
A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.
Alain de Botton
