Quote

The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word luxury.

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
Luxury
View
Views
Word
Understanding
Age
Starkly
Happiness
Materialistic
Revealed

More quotes by Alain de Botton

Image
It is no coincidence that the Western attraction to sublime landscapes developed at precisely the moment when traditional beliefs in God began to wane.
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
Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money.
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
I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.
Alain de Botton
Image
A good half of the art of living is resilience.
Alain de Botton
Image
The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.
Alain de Botton
Image
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).
Alain de Botton
Image
The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.
Alain de Botton
Image
Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
Alain de Botton
Image
There are selections so acute that they come to define a place, with the result that we can no longer travel through that landscape without being reminded of what a great artist noticed there.
Alain de Botton
Image
Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.
Alain de Botton
Image
The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
Alain de Botton
Image
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.
Alain de Botton
Image
...if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody.
Alain de Botton
Image
We should read other people's books in order to learn what we feel it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer's thought that help us to do so.
Alain de Botton
Image
Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
Alain de Botton
Image
In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
Alain de Botton
Image
The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn't call.
Alain de Botton
Image
The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.
Alain de Botton