Bigs Quote by Alain de Botton

“What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of disappointing others.”

Alain de Botton

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 2.1 out of 5 (4 ratings)

Bigs Disappointing Fear Obligation Tiny Turns

More by Alain de Botton

“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

Image

“He feared that by leaving her he would ruin her life - so he stayed, and did just that.”

Alain de Botton

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

Image

“The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the constraints of reality.”

Alain de Botton

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

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

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

Image

I like the values associated with a medical family - common sense, being practical but also thoughtful.

Alain de Botton

Image

“Anyone who urgently needs us deserves, in the true book of love, to be our friend.”

Alain de Botton

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 been able to solve with any particular skill: first, the need to live together in communities in harmony, despite our deeply rooted selfish and violent impulses. And second, the need to cope with terrifying degrees of…

Alain de Botton

“Half the ingratitude and complacency in the world down to how slowly and imperceptibly most good and bad things unfold.”

Alain de Botton

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

Image

Explore all 850 Alain de Botton quotes

More Bigs quotes

I am certain that children always know more than they are able to tell, and that makes the big difference between them and adults,…

Jacques Lusseyran

Image

It is said that history turns on small hinges. A human career, too, results from an accumulating series of decisions about large and small…

Norman Vincent Peale

Image

I'm a true believer in prayer, a big believer in prayer.

Janet Jackson

Image

The biggest change for me as a mom was realizing I needed to put someone else before me. Now the hardest part about the empty nest is learning to put myself first. I know that I have raised my sons to be big, strong, independent men who love God, themselves and care for others. I have to learn to let…

Kim Alexis

I'm a big fan of all the Boston guys that are acting - Matt Damon , Ben Affleck, Mark Wahlberg - they made a great career out of it, and they found a way to do it and still be cool guys, so that's kind of where I want to be.

Kenny Wormald

The only regret I have in my career, is my managers wanted a big payday, and I wanted four or five more fights before…

Gerry Cooney

Image

It goes to show you how we in the press so often miss the big stories that are right under our noses. There is a famous journalistic legend about the time a young reporter covered the Johnstown flood of 1889. The kid wrote: God sat on a hillside overlooking Johnstown today and looked at the destruction He had wrought. His…

Roger Ebert