(Alain De Botton) Quotes
Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.
Work begins when the fear of doing nothing at all finally trumps the terror of doing it badly.
We pick our friends not only because they are kind and enjoyable company, but also, perhaps more importantly, because they understand us for who we think we are.
There is a danger of developing a blanket distaste for modern life which could have its attractions but lack the all-important images to help us identify them.
The essence of art is that its one case applies to thousands, ' knew Schopenhauer.
We are humiliated by what is powerful and mean, but awed by what is powerful and noble.
Maturity' really means: being very unsurprised by, and calm around, pain and disappointment.
I was relying on youth be loyal to the specific variety of compromise and unhappiness, which our hard-won marriage represents.
The quickest way to stop noticing something, may be to buy it—just as the quickest way to stop appreciating someone may be to marry him or her.
On account of its scale and complexity, the world will always outstrip the capacity of any single body to ask fertile questions of it.
The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the constraints of reality.
Everyone is extremely hard and troubled to be around. Everyone has something substantially wrong with them. Everyone is extremely hard to live with.
The rich believe that their money will insulate them from setbacks and frustrations, and that's one of the absurdist expectations of all.
Curiosity takes ignorance seriously, and is confident enough to admit when it does not know. It is aware of not knowing, and it sets out to do something about it
It is difficult when reading the description of certain fictional characters not at the same time to imagine the real-life acquaintances who they most closely, if often unexpectedly, resemble.
Maturity/experience: the beguiling texture of stones subjected to years of furious seas.
Importance of the random: keep brushing up against people, books, experiences we don't yet know what to do with.
Most business meetings involve one party elaborately suppressing a wish to shout at the other: 'just give us the money'.
Introspective reflections that might otherwise be liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape...
Insomnia is his mind's revenge for all the tricky thoughts he has carefully avoided during the daylight hours.
The continuing belief that the world is fundamentally just is implied in the very complaint that there has been an injustice.
It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value.
Half the ingratitude and complacency in the world down to how slowly and imperceptibly most good and bad things unfold.
To appreciate life's small moments, it helps to have a sense the whole can never be made perfect.
A sharp decline in actual deprivation may, paradoxically, have been accompanied by an ongoing and even escalating sense of fear of deprivation.
We never envy another's achievement more than when we know very little about how it was attained.
If we were entirely sane, if madness did not have a serious grip on one side of us, other people's tragedies would hold a great deal less interest for us.
Judged against eternity, how little of what agitates us makes any difference.
He feared that by leaving her he would ruin her life - so he stayed, and did just that.
To grow interested in any piece of information, we need somewhere to 'put' it, which means some way of connecting it to an issue we already now how to care about.
What we colloquially call 'feeling bored' is just the mind, acting out of a self-preserving reflex, ejecting information it has despaired of knowing where to place.
Marriage: a deeply peculiar and ultimately unkind thing to inflict on anyone one claims to care for.
When we suspect that we are appropriate targets for hurt, it does not take much for us to believe that someone or something is out to hurt us
There is an easy way to measure our inner levels of abjectness and friendliness to ourselves: we should examine how well we response to noise.
Learning to give up on perfection may be just about the most romantic move any of us could make.
I see religion as a storehouse of lots of really good ideas that a secular world should look at, raid, and learn from.
I like the values associated with a medical family - common sense, being practical but also thoughtful.
I do think that travel can be part of a journey of inner maturation, but you've got to do it right.
The death of marriage has been announced so often and would seem so normal, in a sense. So what's surprising is the sheer longevity and tenacity of this institution.
We are properly ready for marriage when we are strong enough to embrace a life of frustration.
To a shameful extent, the charm of marriage boils down to how unpleasant it is to be alone.
If you are pro love, you have to be a little bit disloyal to the romantic feelings that propel you in the early days.
