Quote

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

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
Confidence
Disapproval
Philosophy
Socrates
Able
Hysterical
Convictions
Faced
Opposed
Rational
Conviction
Supplied

More quotes by Alain de Botton

Image
People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.
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
In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
Alain de Botton
Image
Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
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
A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
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
Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.
Alain de Botton
Image
Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.
Alain de Botton
Image
Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
Alain de Botton
Image
The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
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
One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.
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
The architects who benefit us most maybe those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius in order to devote themselves to assembling graceful but predominantly unoriginal boxes. Architecture should have the confidence and the kindness to be a little boring.
Alain de Botton
Image
True love is a lack of desire to check one's smartphone in another's presence.
Alain de Botton
Image
Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.
Alain de Botton
Image
Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.
Alain de Botton
Image
By travelling across frontiers, on horseback and in the imagination, Montaigne invited us to to exchange local prejudices and the self division they induced for less constraining identities as citizens of the world.
Alain de Botton
Image
Distress at losing an object can be as much a frustration at the intellectual mystery of the disappearance as about the loss itself.
Alain de Botton