Quote

There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.

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
Thinking
Significance
Nervous
Direct
Relationship
Idea
Become
Ideas
Think
Prospect

More quotes by Alain de Botton

Image
In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.
Alain de Botton
Image
We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.
Alain de Botton
Image
I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day to day take on things. The bare facts of life are utterly terrifying. And yet, one can laugh. Indeed, one has to laugh precisely because of the darkness: the nervous laughter of the trenches.
Alain de Botton
Image
Many moments in religion seem attractive to me even though I can't believe in any of it.
Alain de Botton
Image
Mental health: having enough safe places in your mind for your thoughts to settle.
Alain de Botton
Image
It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming... If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.
Alain de Botton
Image
I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.
Alain de Botton
Image
It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.
Alain de Botton
Image
As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.
Alain de Botton
Image
My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.
Alain de Botton
Image
Being funny should be an incidental byproduct of trying to get to something truthful, not a destination in itself.
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
At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.
Alain de Botton
Image
For all his understanding of worldly concerns, when it came to fathoming the deeper meaning of his own furious activity, Sir Bob displayed the sort of laziness for which he himself had no patience in others. He appeared to have only a passing interest in the overall purpose of his financial accumulation.
Alain de Botton
Image
It should not be Illiers-Combray that we visit: a genuine homage to Proust would be to look at our world through his eyes, not look at his world through our eyes.
Alain de Botton
Image
A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.
Alain de Botton
Image
Newspapers are being read all around. The point is not, of course, to glean new information, but rather to coax the mind out of its sleep-induced introspective temper.
Alain de Botton
Image
The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.
Alain de Botton
Image
There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
Alain de Botton
Image
Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.
Alain de Botton