Quote

Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.

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
Life
Rage
Comic
Origins
Conviction
Contract
However
Contracts
Effects
Caused
Written
Frustration
Almost
Optimistic
Given
Tragic

More quotes by Alain de Botton

Image
Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.
Alain de Botton
Image
Work is most fulfilling when you're at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.
Alain de Botton
Image
to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap
Alain de Botton
Image
Gaffe-focused journalism: revenge of intelligent people who know true evils are out there but lack the access/time to get to them.
Alain de Botton
Image
The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
Alain de Botton
Image
The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.
Alain de Botton
Image
One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.
Alain de Botton
Image
As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.
Alain de Botton
Image
In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn't worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there's no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven't had a good time, Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?
Alain de Botton
Image
The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.
Alain de Botton
Image
One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us happy.
Alain de Botton
Image
Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.
Alain de Botton
Image
These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.
Alain de Botton
Image
Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?
Alain de Botton
Image
The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word luxury.
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
The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.
Alain de Botton
Image
The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things
Alain de Botton
Image
You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them.
Alain de Botton
Image
The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.
Alain de Botton