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Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton Quotes

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Famous Alain de Botton Quotes

“Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is in front of our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, new thoughts new places. Introspective reflections which are liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape. The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do.”

ThinkingMindMayEyeAbleMovingViewsJourneyFrontsConversationReflectionFlowTrainShipsLandscapePlanesInternalsNew ThoughtReluctantIntrospectiveLiableCorrelationNew PlacesQuaintMidwife
Book:The Art of Travel
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“If the behaviour of babies and small children is any guide, we emerge into the world with our tendencies to imbalance already well entrenched. In our playpens and high chairs, we are rarely far from displaying either hysterical happiness or savage disappointment, love or rage, mania or exhaustion--and, despite the growth of a more temperate exterior in adulthood, we seldom succeed in laying claim to lasting equilibrium, traversing our lives like stubbornly listing ships on choppy seas.”

IfsWorldWellsChildrenGrowthOur LivesSeaBabySucceedClaimsDisappointmentGuidesRageShipsTendenciesDespiteChairsLastingAdulthoodBehaviourSavagesEquilibriumExhaustionExteriorSmall ChildHystericalImbalanceManiaDisappointment Love
Author:Alain de Botton
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“Someone who has thought rationally and deeply about how the body works is likely to arrive at better ideas about how to be healthy than someone who has followed a hunch. Medicine presupposes a hierarchy between the confusion the layperson will be in about what is wrong with him, and the more accurate knowledge available to doctors reasoning logically. At the heart of Epicureanism is the thought that we are as bad at answering the question "What will make me happy?" as "What will make me healthy?" Our souls do not spell out their troubles.”

HeartIdeasSoulBodyTroubleHealthyDoctorsMedicineAvailableConfusionReasoningSpellsAccurateHierarchyMake Me HappyHunchesEpicureanismBody Work
Author:Alain de Botton
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“We don't exist unless there is someone who can see us existing, what we say has no meaning until someone can understand, while to be surrounded by friends is constantly to have our identity confirmed; their knowledge and care for us have the power to pull us from our numbness. In small comments, many of them teasing, they reveal they know our foibles and except them and so, in turn, accept that we have a place in the world.”

KnowsWorldCareTurnsAcceptingIdentityCommentPlaces In The WorldTeaseNumbnessFoiblesSurrounded By Friends
Author:Alain de Botton
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“I thought about societies where exceptional fortunes are built up in industries with very little connection to out sincere and significant needs, industries where it is difficult to escape from the disparity between a seriousness of means and a triviality of ends.”

NeedsMeanLittlesEndsDifficultIndustryBuiltConnectionsFortuneSignificantSincereExceptionalSeriousnessDisparityTriviality
Book:The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
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“Symons remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him was the idea that they ought somehow, in the normal course of events, to have intuited long before they had finished their degrees, started families, bought houses and risen to the top of law firms - what they should properly be doing with their lives. They were tormented by a residual notion of having through some error or stupidity on their part missed out on their true calling.”

ShouldLongIdeasLawCoursesHouseCommonEventsOughtCallingDegreesNormalIllusionErrorsNotionStupidityFinishedFirmRisenResidualLaw Firms
Author:Alain de Botton
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“In reality, the likelihood of reaching the pinnacle of capitalist society today is only marginally better than were the chances of being accepted into the French nobility four centuries ago, though at least an aristocratic age was franker, and therefore kinder, about the odds. It did not relentlessly play up the possibilities open to all, and so, in turn, did not cruelly equate an ordinary life with a failed one.”

PlayRealityAgeTodayTurnsChanceFourCenturyPossibilityOrdinaryAcceptedReachingCapitalistOddsNobilityOrdinary LifeKinderLikelihoodPinnacleAristocraticSociety TodayBeing Accepted
Author:Alain de Botton
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“The origins and travels of our purchases remain matters of indifference, although to the more imaginative at least a slight dampness at the bottom of a carton, or an obscure code printed along a computer cable, may hint at processes of manufacture and transport nobler and more mysterious, more worthy of wonder and study, than the very goods themselves.”

MayMatterProcessWonderStudyComputerBottomVery GoodWorthyMysteriousCodeIndifferenceGoodsObscureImaginativeCablesPrintedHintsTransport
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“An understandable hunger for potential clients tempts many [career counseling therapists] to overpromise, like creative writing teachers who, out of greed or sentimentality, sometimes imply that all of their students could one day produce worthwhile literature, rather than frankly acknowledging the troubling truth, anathema to a democratic society, that the great writer, like the contented worker, remains an erratic and anomalous event, immune to the methods of factory farming.”

WritingSometimesLiteratureCareersCreativeTeacherEventsStudentsProduceOne DayMethodRemainsDemocraticWorkersGreedHungerFactoriesWorthwhileClientsCreative WritingFarmingImmuneTherapistsGreat WritersSentimentalityCounselingDemocratic SocietyFactory FarmingErraticAnathema
Author:Alain de Botton
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“Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or bicycle.”

LittlesStillsRealityLeftSidesLinesToo MuchOptimismEdgesCriticalSpeedTinyPsychologicalRangeFlawsMinorsImpatienceExquisiteBicycleBrillianceSentimentalityAircraftDealingsRunwayProximityHigh SpeedStrandedTractors
Author:Alain de Botton
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“The pre-scientific age, whatever its deficiencies, had at least offered its members the peace of mind that follows from knowing all man-made achievements to be nothing next to the grandeur of the universe. We, more blessed in our gadgetry but less humble in our outlook, have been left... having no more compelling repository of veneration than our brilliant, precise, blinkered and morally troubling fellow human beings.”

MenMindHumansHas BeensMadeAgeUniverseNextLeftHuman BeingsKnowingMembersAchievementFellowsBlessedHumbleBrilliantPeace Of MindCompellingPreciseOutlookGrandeurDeficiencyVeneration
Author:Alain de Botton
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