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Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that the impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence.

Alain de Botton

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Alain de Botton
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Nothing
Simplicity
Impassable
Writing
Protection
Unparalleled
Requires
Dismissed
Intelligence
Tenacious
Offers
Incomprehensible
Danger
Hallmark
Courage
Overlooked
Belief
Prose
Simpleminded

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It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.
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Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
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Dreams reveal we never quite get 'over' anything: it's all still in there somewhere.
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Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.
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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
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These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.
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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.
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The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn't call.
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Social media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people who have nothing in common except that you're human.
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The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.
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The challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other's smartphone.
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Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.
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People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.
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We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy: they are our covert guides to what we should try to do next.
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Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.
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People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft.
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Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.
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Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
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It seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us recognise the important things that we are too defeated or embittered to recognise from day to day.
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Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
Alain de Botton