Quote

We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.

Alain de Botton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alain de Botton
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Hearts
Special
Keep
Place
Heart
People
Impressed
Refuse

More quotes by Alain de Botton

Image
One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.
Alain de Botton
Image
A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
Alain de Botton
Image
True love is a lack of desire to check one's smartphone in another's presence.
Alain de Botton
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.
Alain de Botton
Image
In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well.
Alain de Botton
Image
Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.
Alain de Botton
Image
Rather than saying 'I hate mess', it might draw more compassion to say, 'mess terrifies me as a harbinger of catastrophe'.
Alain de Botton
Image
Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.
Alain de Botton
Image
We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.
Alain de Botton
Image
To one's enemies: I hate myself more than you ever could.
Alain de Botton
Image
Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.
Alain de Botton
Image
It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.
Alain de Botton
Image
Although I don't believe in God, Bach's music shows me what a love of God must feel like.
Alain de Botton
Image
Our bodies hold our minds hostage to their whims and rhythms.
Alain de Botton
Image
Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.
Alain de Botton
Image
A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.
Alain de Botton
Image
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
Image
It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.
Alain de Botton