Quote

The degree of sympathy we feel regarding another's fiasco is directly proportional to how easy or difficult it is for us to imagine ourselves, under like circumstances, making a similar mistake.

Alain de Botton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alain de Botton
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Another
Degree
Feel
Degrees
Feels
Circumstances
Fiasco
Like
Mistake
Proportional
Imagine
Regarding
Making
Sympathy
Difficult
Similar
Easy
Directly

More quotes by Alain de Botton

Image
Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.
Alain de Botton
Image
An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths - by panicked shouting.
Alain de Botton
Image
When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.
Alain de Botton
Image
What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
Alain de Botton
Image
Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
Alain de Botton
Image
Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm... it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly.
Alain de Botton
Image
I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.
Alain de Botton
Image
The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.
Alain de Botton
Image
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.
Alain de Botton
Image
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.
Alain de Botton
Image
You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
Alain de Botton
Image
Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own - but that we could never have described on our own.
Alain de Botton
Image
If one felt successful, there'd be so little incentive to be successful.
Alain de Botton
Image
Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?
Alain de Botton
Image
Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.
Alain de Botton
Image
After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.
Alain de Botton
Image
The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
Alain de Botton
Image
Curiosity takes ignorance seriously - and is confident enough to admit when it's in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.
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
People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft.
Alain de Botton