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Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton Quotes

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Famous Alain de Botton Quotes

“William James once made an acute point about the relationship between happiness and expectation. He argued that satisfaction with ourselves does not require us to succeed in every endeavour. We are not always humiliated by failing; we are humiliated only if we first invest our pride and sense of worth in a given achievement and then do not reach it.”

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Author:Alain de Botton
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“Rather than teasing the buyers, we may blame the society in which they lived for setting up a situation where the purchase of ornate cabinets felt psychologically necessary and rewarding, where respect was dependent on baroque displays. Rather than a tale of greed, the history of luxury could more accurately be read as a record of emotional trauma. It is the legacy of those who have felt pressured by the disdain of others to add an extraordinary amount to their bare selves in order to signal that they too may lay a claim to love.”

MaySelfOrderFeltSituationRecordsEmotionalAmountClaimsBlameLaysAddExtraordinaryGreedTraumaSettingTalesSettingsLuxuryLegacyDependentDisplaySignalsCabinetsTeaseDisdainBuyersPressuredBaroqueEmotional Trauma
Book:Status Anxiety
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“That said, deciding to avoid other people does not necessarily equate with having no desire whatsoever for company; it may simply reflect a dissatisfaction with what—or who—is available. Cynics are, in the end, only idealists with awkwardly high standards. In Chamfort's words, 'It is sometimes said of a man who lives alone that he does not like society. This is like saying of a man that he does not like going for walks because he is not fond of walking at night in the forêt de Bondy.”

PeopleMenMayDoeSaidEndsSometimesDesireNightWalksCompanyWalkingStandardsAvailableDissatisfactionIdealistHigh Standards
Author:Alain de Botton
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“Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.”

HomeSongNamesSpeakBuildingOffersClothesGardenRelationHarmonyLibraryStoresPermanentMeritInternalsAirportsRecogniseDiners
Book:The Architecture of Happiness
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“It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.”

NeedsLittlesMightPainBeautifulValuesTurnsGriefBuildingAppreciationDialogueAcquireUnusualBeautiful ThingsRequirementsAcquaintancePrerequisites
Book:The Architecture of Happiness
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“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”

KnowsBelieveMeanLightBehindsMysteryDesignEverydayAcknowledgeComplexityMechanismGesturesReflexesUnlearnSwitchingSwitching Off
Book:The Architecture of Happiness
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“Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won't find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one and decide that everything within it will somehow be free of our faults. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through our union with the beloved hope to maintain (against the evidence of all self-knowledge) a precarious faith in our species.”

KnowsSelfFallWeaknessEvidencePerfectionUnionsFaultsSpeciesFalling In LoveStupidityChosenCompromiseTriumphBelovedCowardiceLazinessSelf KnowledgeDishonestyPrecariousEludeChosen OneElude Us
Book:On Love: A Novel
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“There are things that are not spoken about in polite society. Very quickly in most conversations you'll reach a moment where someone goes, 'Oh, that's a bit heavy,' or 'Eew, disgusting.' And literature is a place where that stuff goes; where people whisper to each other across books, the writer to the reader. I think that stops you feeling lonely – in the deeper sense, lonely.”

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Author:Alain de Botton
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“Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design. It is an example expressed through materials of the same tendencies which in other domains will lead us to marry the wrong people, choose inappropriate jobs and book unsuccessful holidays: the tendency not to understand who we are and what will satisfy us.”

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Author:Alain de Botton
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