“And I wondered, with mounting anxiety, What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“But reassurance can be the cruelest antidote to anxiety. Our rosy predictions both leave the anxious unprepared for the worst.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the constraints of reality.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“A sharp decline in actual deprivation may, paradoxically, have been accompanied by an ongoing and even escalating sense of fear of deprivation.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don't get on with machismo. I'm interested in sensitivity, and weakness,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place; our anxiety over losing a precious scene… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentially for reasons of status: for not… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Neither does philosophy deny the utility of certain kinds of anxiety. After all, as successful insomniacs have long suggested, it may be… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
No one is able to produce a great work of art without experience, nor achieve a worldly position immediately, nor be a… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Our capacity for calm ultimately depends on our levels of expectation: if we suppose that most things normally turn out to be… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Status Anxiety: A worry, so pernicious as to be capable of ruining extended stretches of our lives, that we are in danger… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another--which is not to say… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Despite its maddeningly vague, inarticulate form, anxiety is almost always trying to tell you something useful and apposite. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness". — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“To be mature is, we're told, to move beyond possessiveness. Jealousy is for babies. The mature person knows that no one owns anyone.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“He feared that by leaving her he would ruin her life - so he stayed, and did just that.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the constraints of reality.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“We could not be fulfilled if we weren't inauthentic some of the time—inauthentic, that is, in relation to such things as our passing desires… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Insofar as we appreciate order, it is when we perceive it as being accompanied by complexity, when we feel that a variety of elements… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I like the values associated with a medical family - common sense, being practical but also thoughtful. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Anyone who urgently needs us deserves, in the true book of love, to be our friend.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“We can then recognize that we invented religions to serve two central needs which continue to this day and which secular society has not… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Half the ingratitude and complacency in the world down to how slowly and imperceptibly most good and bad things unfold.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
![“[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of failing to understand ourselves and misinterpreting the behaviour of others, of growing unproductively anxious or desirous, and of losing ourselves to vanity and error…” quote by Alain de Botton](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/a9c/alain-de-botton-221_anxiety_l-ife-is-a-phenomenon-in-need-of-critici_1775630.jpg)
