Quote

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

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Alain de Botton
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Wells
Writer
Without
Problems
Well
Stuff
Britain
Writing
Running
Envy
Work
Someone
Complete
Also
Competition
Problem
Calling
Live
Fool

More quotes by Alain de Botton

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The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren't there. The answers are there in the morning.
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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.
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Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.
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In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.
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A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It’s almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments.
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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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Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
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The more dignity is widely and freely available in a society, the less people want to be famous.
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The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that.
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Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.
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It would scarcely be acceptable, for example, to ask in the course of an ordinary conversation what our society holds to be the purpose of work.
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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.
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We may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they're doing it.
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Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
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The activities of drawing, eating and drinking, all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness from without to within.
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A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.
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The problem isn't so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice.
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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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Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
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We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).
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