Quote

According to Montaigne, it was the oppressive notion that we had complete mental control over our bodies, and the horror of departing from this portrait of normality, that had left the man unable to perform sexually.

Alain de Botton

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Alain de Botton
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Complete
Portrait
Horror
Sexually
Notion
Portraits
Control
Unable
Left
Perform
Montaigne
Body
Bodies
Departing
Men
According
Normality
Love
Mental
Oppressive

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To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.
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True love is a lack of desire to check one's smartphone in another's presence.
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Many moments in religion seem attractive to me even though I can't believe in any of it.
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A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.
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A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which the consequences of our failures would necessarily cease to weigh upon us so heavily.
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We are sad at home and blame the weather and the ugliness of the buildings, but on the tropical island we learn that the state of the skies and the appearance of our dwellings can never on their own underwrite our joy nor condemn us to misery.
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Though debts are condemned in the financial world, the world of friendship and love may perversely depend on well-managed debts.
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Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities.
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Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.
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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?
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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.
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Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
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A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.
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Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.
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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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Responsible for wrapping the iron fist of authority in its velvet glove is Jane Axtell, head of the accountancy firm's Human Resources department.
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It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.
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It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.
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One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.
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Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.
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