Quotessence
Home / Authors / Alain de Botton
Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllPeopleMayIfsLoveThinkingShouldWorldWayNeedsFeelsMightArtBookAnxietyWorkKnowsMindWritingBelieveEnds

Famous Alain de Botton Quotes

“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
Create image

“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
Author:Alain de Botton
Create image

“.. 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.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWayWantBelieveChanceMajorityCynicism
Author:Alain de Botton
Create image

“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
Create image

“Perhaps because the origins of a certain kind of love lie in an impulse to escape ourselves and out weaknesses by an alliance with the beautiful and noble. But if the loved ones love us back, we are forced to return to ourselves, and are hence reminded of the things that had driven us into love in the first place. Perhaps it was not love we wanted after all, perhaps it was simply someone in whom to believe, but how can we continue to believe the the beloved now that they believe in us?”

IfsFirstsBelieveKindWantedBeautifulLyingCertainReturnWeaknessNobleDrivenImpulseBelovedLoved OnesAlliancesKinds Of LoveLove LiesBelieve In Us
Author:Alain de Botton
Create image

“We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire.”

GivingBelieveFacesDesireCertainOrderOur LivesImagineAchievementAnxietyEndureSatisfactionPossessionWideInvitedTemptedSummitCliffsSteep
Book:Status Anxiety
Create image