Quote

How do the stems connect to the roots?' 'Where is the mist coming from?' 'Why does one tree seem darker than another?' These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.

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
Tree
Stem
Process
Answered
Another
Connect
Seems
Roots
Implicitly
Doe
Questions
Sketching
Asked
Stems
Seem
Darker
Coming
Mist

More quotes by Alain de Botton

Image
To cut out every negative root would simultaneously mean choking off positive elements that might arise from it further up the stem of the plant. We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
Alain de Botton
Image
Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
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
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
Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others - because it's a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.
Alain de Botton
Image
We don't really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped ... We suffer, therefore we think.
Alain de Botton
Image
Happiness may be difficult to obtain. The obstacles are not primarily financial.
Alain de Botton
Image
Responsible for wrapping the iron fist of authority in its velvet glove is Jane Axtell, head of the accountancy firm's Human Resources department.
Alain de Botton
Image
Must being in love always mean being in pain?
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
The secular world is full of holes. We have secularized badly.
Alain de Botton
Image
So many complaints boil down to the belly ache of the fragile, mortal, ignored ego in a vast and indifferent universe.
Alain de Botton
Image
Despite its maddeningly vague, inarticulate form, anxiety is almost always trying to tell you something useful and apposite.
Alain de Botton
Image
Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.
Alain de Botton
Image
It would be foolish to describe the logistics hub as merely ugly, for it has the horrifying, soulless, immaculate beauty characteristic of many of the workplaces of the modern world.
Alain de Botton
Image
The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.
Alain de Botton
Image
I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
Alain de Botton
Image
The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable.
Alain de Botton
Image
The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where ordinary life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.
Alain de Botton
Image
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.
Alain de Botton