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Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton Quotes

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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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“The problem with clichés is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones...If...we are obliged to create our own language, it is because there are dimensions to ourselves absent from clichés, which require us to flout etiquette in order to convey with greater accuracy the distinctive timbre of our thought.”

IfsIdeasProblemOrderLanguageGreaterVery GoodDimensionsOur ThoughtsSuperficialObligedAbsentEtiquetteAccuracyDistinctiveArticulationTimbre
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“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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“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
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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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“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 fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as beautiful, intelligent, and witty as we are ugly, stupid, and dull. But what if such a perfect being should one day turn around and decide they will love us back? We can only be somewhat shocked-how can they be as wonderful as we had hoped when they have the bad taste to approve of someone like us?”

IfsShouldLongBeautifulTurnsFallPerfectWonderfulStupidTasteOne DayIntelligentFalling In LoveWittyUglyDullWhat IfShockedBad Taste
Book:On Love
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“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
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“To be loved by someone is to realize how much they share the same needs that lie at the heart of our own attraction to them. Albert Camus suggested that we fall in love with people because, from the outside, they look so whole, physically whole and emotionally 'together' - when subjectively we feel dispersed and confused. We would not love if there were no lack within us, but we are offended by the discovery of a similar lack in the other. Expecting to find the answer, we find only the duplicate of our own problem.”

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Book:On Love: A Novel
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“It is this idea 'decency' should be attached to wealth -and 'indecency'' to poverty - that forms the core of one strand of skeptical complaint against the modern status-ideal. Why should failure to make money be taken as a sign of an unconditionally flawed human being rather than of a fiasco in one particular area if the far larger, more multifaceted, project of leading a good life? Why should both wealth and poverty be read as the predominant guides to an individual's morals ?”

IfsShouldHumansIdeasFormIndividualWealthHuman BeingsMoralPovertyTakenModernParticularProjectsAreasIdealsGuidesCoreMaking MoneyGood LifeComplaintsFlawedDecencySkepticalStrandsFiascoWealth And Poverty
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“If optimism is important, it's because many outcomes are determined by how much of it we bring to the task. It is an important ingredient of success. This flies in the face of the elite view that talent is the primary requirement of a good life, but in many cases the difference between success and failure is determined by nothing more than our sense of what is possible and the energy we can muster to convince others of our due. We might be doomed not by a lack of skill, but by an absence of hope!”

IfsImportantMightFacesEnergyDifferencesViewsCasesTalentSkillsTasksOptimismDeterminedDuesAbsencePrimariesOutcomesConvinceIngredientsGood LifeElitesAnticipationDoomedRequirementsSuccess And FailureMuster
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