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Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton Quotes

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Famous Alain de Botton Quotes

“It seemed an advantage to be traveling alone. Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others...Being closely observed by a companion can also inhibit our observation of others; then, too, we may become caught up in adjusting ourselves to the companion's questions and remarks, or feel the need to make ourselves seem more normal than is good for our curiosity.”

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Author:Alain de Botton
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“There is psychological pleasure in this takeoff, too, for the swiftness of the plane’s ascent is an exemplary symbol of transformation. The display of power can inspire us to imagine analogous, decisive shifts in our own lives, to imagine that we, too, might one day surge above much that now looms over us.” P. 38-39”

MightPleasureImagineInspireOne DayTransformationPsychologicalSymbolsPlanesDisplayImagine ThatAscentExemplarySwiftnessTakeoff
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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.”

MayMadeStillsCountryObviousProductivityDevelopingManifestDesksDocumentsStrictBureaucracyObserversFilesCabinetsTrue NatureComplementDeveloping CountriesPaperworkInverse
Book:The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
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“We might have been ready to offer sympathy, but in actuality there were stronger reasons to want to congratulate her for having found such a powerful motive to feel sad. We should have envied her for having located someone without whom she so firmly felt she could not survive, beyond the gate let along in a bare student bedroom in a suburb of Rio. If she had been able to view her situation from a sufficient distance, she might have been able to recognise this as one of the high points in her life.”

IfsWantFeelsShouldHas BeensReasonMightAbleFoundFeltViewsPowerfulSituationStudentsReadyOffersShould HaveStrongerDistanceSufficientMotiveGatesBedroomMight Have BeenRecogniseSuburbsEnviedActualityRioHigh Points
Author:Alain de Botton
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“Nowhere was the airport's charm more concentrated than on the screens placed at intervals across the terminal which announced, in deliberately workmanlike fonts, the itineraries of aircraft about to take to the skies. These screens implied a feeling of infinite and immediate possibility: they suggested the ease with which we might impulsively approach a ticket desk and, within a few hours, embark for a country where the call to prayer rang out over shuttered whitewashed houses, where we understood nothing of the language and where no one knew our identities.”

CountryFeelingsMightHouseLanguageHoursPrayerSkyIdentityPossibilityApproachUnderstoodInfiniteScreensEaseCharmDesksTicketsAirportsIntervalsAircraftTerminalImpliedFonts
Book:A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary
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“People who hold important positions in society are commonly labelled "somebodies," and their inverse "nobodies"-both of which are, of course, nonsensical descriptors, for we are all, by necessity, individuals with distinct identities and comparable claims on existence. Such words are nevertheless an apt vehicle for conveying the disparate treatment accorded to different groups. Those without status are all but invisible: they are treated brusquely by others, their complexities trampled upon and their singularities ignored.”

PeopleImportantDifferentCoursesIndividualExistenceGroupsIdentityPositionClaimsInvisibleTreatedComplexityTreatmentVehicleNeverthelessIgnoredSingularityNonsensicalInverseConveying
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“He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on professional matters, then promptly stop in his tracks to peer inquisitively into his guest's eyes for signs of boredom or mockery, being intelligent enough to be unable fully to believe in his own claims to significance. He might, in a past life, have been a particularly canny and sharp-tongued royal advisor.”

BelieveHas BeensMatterEnoughMightEyePastClaimsIntelligentTrackVulnerabilityBoredomSignificanceGuestsPeersRoyalMixturesMockeryPast LifeMonologuesAdvisors
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“It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and frenetic pursuit of wealth.”

FactsSeemsInterestChallengesWealthGreaterFameAchievementConcernDirectPursuitRuinsFollyRuinedRemindersFragilityBustlePuncturePursuit Of Wealth
Book:The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
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“Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the status hierarchy; they have attemptee, rather, to institute new kinds of hierarchies based on sets of values unrecognised by, and critical of, those of the majority.. They have provided us with persuasive and consoling reminders that there is more than one way of succeeding in life.”

WayKindArtPhilosophyValuesSucceedMajorityCriticalOne WayRemindersHierarchyInstitutePersuasiveConsolingSucceeding In LifeBohemia
Author:Alain de Botton
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“According to one influential wing of modern secular society there are few more disreputable fates than to end up being 'like everyone else' for 'everyone else' is a category that comprises the mediocre and the conformist, the boring and the suburban. The goal of all right-thinking people should be to mark themselves off from the crowd and 'stand out' in whatever way their talents allow.”

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“At the beginning of human history, as we struggled to light fires and to chisel fallen trees into rudimentary canoes, who could have predicted that long after we had managed to send men to the moon and areoplanes to Australasia, we would still have such trouble knowing how to tolerate ourselves, forgive our loved ones, and apologise for our tantrums?”

MenHumansLongStillsLightKnowingFireTroubleTreeMoonForgivingFallenLoved OnesTolerateHuman HistoryTantrumsChiselsFallen Trees
Author:Alain de Botton
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“.. if you asked most people whether they believed in love or not, they’d probably say they didn’t. Yet that’s not necessarily what they truly think. It’s just the way they defend themselves against what they want. They believe in it, but pretend they don’t until they’re allowed to. Most people would throw away all their cynicism if they could. The majority just never gets the chance.”

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“Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom we know nothing. Romances are never as pure as those we imagine during long train journeys, as we secretly contemplate a beautiful person who is gazing out of the window – a perfect love story interrupted only when the beloved looks back into the carriage and starts up a dull conversation about the excessive price of the on-board sandwiches with a neighbour or blows her nose aggressively into a handkerchief.”

PeopleKnowsLooksPersonsLongStoriesBeautifulRomanceFallPerfectImagineJourneyPureConversationWindowTrainFalling In LoveBlowLove StoryNosesBelovedBoardsDullContemplatingNeighbourSandwichesInterruptedGazingCarriagesPerfect LoveHandkerchiefsBeautiful Person
Book:On Love: A Novel
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“If cynicism and love lie at opposite ends of a spectrum, do we not sometimes fall in love in order to escape the debilitating cynicism to which we are prone? Is there not in every coup de foudre a certain willful exaggeration of the qualities of the beloved, an exaggeration which distracts us from our habitual pessimism and focuses our energies on someone in whom we can believe in a way we have never believed in ourselves?”

IfsWayBelieveEndsSometimesLyingCertainOrderFallEnergyQualityOppositesAnd LoveFalling In LoveBelovedPessimismCynicismSpectrumExaggerationHabitualCoupsLove Lies
Book:On Love: A Novel
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“We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need — but are at constant risk of forgetting what we need — within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves.”

NeedsLooksKindIdeasSelfFormTurnsForgetVisionRiskStreetsBuildingPaintingMaterialsDependsConstantCommunicateMoodPsychologicalHelpfulTrue SelfSurroundingsBenchesDisappearanceMould
Book:The Architecture of Happiness
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“We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.”

WorldNeedsMindImportantStatesHomeSidesRoomsAliveVersionsPsychologicalVulnerabilityShoreState Of MindRefugeDesirableAllegiance
Author:Alain de Botton
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