« All Them Quotes · Alain de Botton's Page
Them Quotes by Alain de Botton
- The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two peoples who feel deeply humiliated by the other,…
- I assemble my ideas in pieces on a computer file, then gradually find a place for them on a piece of scaffolding I erect.
- Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentially for reasons of status: for not showing them respect,…
- Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of…
- Gaffe-focused journalism: revenge of intelligent people who know true evils are out there but lack the access/time to get to them.
- The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may…
- We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
- It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings…
- If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a…
- Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than…
- We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in…
- The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected…
- 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…
- 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…
- You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them.
- Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.
- The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to…
- The best cure for one's bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.
- 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…
- There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.
- There are few more effective ways to promote tolerance between suspicious neighbours than to force them to eat supper together.
More Them Quotes
- Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake… — Hannah Arendt
- A high heart ought to bear calamities and not flee them, since in bearing them appears the grandeur of the mind and… — Pietro Aretino
- If you want to annoy your neighbors, tell the truth about them. — Pietro Aretino
- Flattery and deceit are the darlings of great men, and so with these men spread the butter on thick, if you want… — Pietro Aretino
- As we all know, many people remain buried under tons of rubble and debris, waiting to be rescued. When we think of… — Jean-Bertrand Aristide
- Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those… — Aristotle
- In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of… — Aristotle
- Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes… — Aristotle
- Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms. — Aristotle
- Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them. — Aristotle
- Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit. — Aristotle
- Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see… — Paul Auster