Quote

The real issue is not whether baking biscuits is meaningful, but the extent to which the activity can seem to be so after it has been continuously stretched and subdivided across five thousand lives.

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
Seem
Baking
Thousand
Stretched
Issues
Continuously
Five
Extent
Whether
Meaningful
Lives
Issue
Seems
Across
Subdivided
Real
Activity
Biscuits

More quotes by Alain de Botton

Image
To one's enemies: I hate myself more than you ever could.
Alain de Botton
Image
We may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they're doing it.
Alain de Botton
Image
What should worry us is not the number of people that oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so.
Alain de Botton
Image
Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place our anxiety over losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the shutter.
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
Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
Alain de Botton
Image
Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to have a successful life. Some of these suggestions are deeply unhelpful to our own projects and priorities - and we should take care.
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
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
What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.
Alain de Botton
Image
A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which the consequences of our failures would necessarily cease to weigh upon us so heavily.
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
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
Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.
Alain de Botton
Image
Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.
Alain de Botton
Image
As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers - and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.
Alain de Botton
Image
The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.
Alain de Botton
Image
There are people who say, 'Oh this guy is quite thick.' I think the reason is that, increasingly, I don't mind being simple in terms of literary expression. Others say, 'No, no, no. He went to Cambridge. He got a good degree. He must be Einstein.'
Alain de Botton
Image
We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.
Alain de Botton
Image
Taking architecture seriously therefore makes some singular and strenuous demands upon us...It means conceding that we are inconveniently vulnerable to the colour of our wallpaper and that our sense of purpose may be derailed by an unfortunate bedspread
Alain de Botton