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Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.

Alain de Botton

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Alain de Botton
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Start
Book
Done
Much
Declaring
Finished
Remains
Completely

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We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).
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Happiness may be difficult to obtain. The obstacles are not primarily financial.
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Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
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The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.
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Responsible for wrapping the iron fist of authority in its velvet glove is Jane Axtell, head of the accountancy firm's Human Resources department.
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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.
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We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.
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A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.
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Good sex isn't just fun, it keeps us sane and happy. Having sex with someone makes us feel wanted, alive and potent.
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There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.
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Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.
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A good half of the art of living is resilience.
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Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.
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Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
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Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.
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Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically teaches viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves.
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The problem isn't so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice.
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Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
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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.
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We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
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