(Alain De Botton) Quotes
A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.
Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.
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.
...if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody.
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.
I went to church and couldn't swallow it. The music was nice but I don't belong there.
When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins.
Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as inherent & unbudgeable as those in food.
The more dignity is widely and freely available in a society, the less people want to be famous.
The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable.
The degree of sympathy we feel regarding another's fiasco is directly proportional to how easy or difficult it is for us to imagine ourselves, under like circumstances, making a similar mistake.
People who go on to be writers are those who can forgive themselves the horror of the first draft.
Though debts are condemned in the financial world, the world of friendship and love may perversely depend on well-managed debts.
Our sense of what is valuable will hence be radically distorted if we must perpetually condemn as tedious everything we lack, simply because we lack it.
Choosing a spouse and a choosing career: the two great decisions for which society refuses to set up institutional guidance.
It should not be Illiers-Combray that we visit: a genuine homage to Proust would be to look at our world through his eyes, not look at his world through our eyes.
One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us happy.
It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.
Much of the really serious trouble in the world gets going with a sense of humiliation.
Rather than saying 'I hate mess', it might draw more compassion to say, 'mess terrifies me as a harbinger of catastrophe'.
Many moments in religion seem attractive to me even though I can't believe in any of it.
Despite its maddeningly vague, inarticulate form, anxiety is almost always trying to tell you something useful and apposite.
We accept the need to train extensively to fly a plane; but think instinct should be enough for marrying and raising kids.
We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.
A lump rises in our throat at the sight of beauty from an implicit knowledge that the happiness it hints at is the exception.
It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love.
It would scarcely be acceptable, for example, to ask in the course of an ordinary conversation what our society holds to be the purpose of work.
It is no coincidence that the Western attraction to sublime landscapes developed at precisely the moment when traditional beliefs in God began to wane.
Gaffe-focused journalism: revenge of intelligent people who know true evils are out there but lack the access/time to get to them.
The universe is large and we are tiny, without the need for further religious superstructure. One can have so-called spiritual moments without belief in the spirit.
Religions are so subtle, so complicated, so intelligent in many ways that they're not fit to be abandoned to the religious alone; they're for all of us.
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.
The lesson? To respond to the unexpected and hurtful behavior of others with something more than a wipe of the glasses, to see it as a chance to expand our understanding.
Responsible for wrapping the iron fist of authority in its velvet glove is Jane Axtell, head of the accountancy firm's Human Resources department.
Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?
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).
Alcohol-inspired fights are a reminder of the price we pay for our daily submission at the altars of prudence and order.
Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know whether or not it was funny.
Being funny should be an incidental byproduct of trying to get to something truthful, not a destination in itself.
I know a lot about writing, but I don't know much about how other industries work. I've tried to use my naivety to my advantage.
The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true.
We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers... Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness...
we would not reliably assent to reproduce unless we first had lost our minds.
The feeling one has no time to get anything done provides the pressure that guarantees one does get some things done.