Quotes from Alain de Botton

We seem divided between an urge to override our senses and numb ourselves to our settings and a contradictory impulse to acknowledge the extent to which our identities are indelibly connected to, and will shift along with, our locations.

For the Romantic, it is only the briefest of steps from a glimpse of a stranger to the formulation of a majestic and substantial conclusion: that he or she may constitute a comprehensive answer to the unspoken questions of existence.

É um sinal de que duas pessoas tenham parado de amar uma a outra (ou pelo menos parado de desejar fazer o esforço que constitui noventa por cento do amor)quando não são mais capazes de transformar diferenças em piadas.

My dear friend, I may be dense,' replied Humblot after having taken a brief and clearly bewildering glance at the opening of the novel, 'but I fail to see why a chap needs thirty pages to describe how he tosses and turns in bed before falling asleep.

The notion of buildings that speak helps us to place at the very centre of our architectural conundrums the question of the values we want to live by — rather than merely of how we want things to look.

One of the privileges of being on our own is therefore the sincere impression that we are really quite easy to live with

Alice loved in order to make up for her own insufficiencies, she searched in others for qualities she aspired to, respected but lacked. Her emotional needs were like a puzzle incomplete without a segment brought by another but the dimensions of the void altered in response to self-development, the piece which fitted at fifteen would no longer fit at thirty. The gap redrew its contours, and unless the puzzle-person kept up she would be left to divorce or awkwardly force the issue.

Among the thin birch trees and simple flowers on the rough land of the Pentland Hills is set a tablet, like an ancient tomb stone, on the base of which has been carved the resonant Latin phrase et in arcadia ego. The words are the voice of the tomb: I, death, am here, in the midst of life.

How kind we would be if we managed to import even a little of this instinct into adult relationships—if here, too, we could look past the grumpiness and viciousness and recognize the fear, confusion, and exhaustion which almost invariably underlie them. This is what it would mean to gaze upon the human race with love.

One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us seriously happy.

F?r? dragoste, ne pierdem capacitatea de a avea o identitate real?; în dragoste exist? o constant? confirmare a sinelui

Singurii oameni care înc? ni se par normal sunt cei pe care nu-i cunoaÈ™tem îndeajuns. Cel mai bun leac pentru iubire e s? apuc?m s?-i cunoaÈ™tem mai bine.

De door alcohol opgewekte gevechten die op zaterdagavonden in provincieplaatsen uitbreken zijn voorspelbare symptomen van onze verbolgenheid over deze vrijheidsberoving. Ze herinneren ons aan de prijs die we betalen voor onze dagelijkse onderwerping aan orde en beleid - en aan de woede die stilletjes aanzwelt achter een gezagsgetrouwe en inschikkelijke façade.

With perspective in mind, we soon realize that – contrary to what the news suggests – hardly anything is totally novel, few things are truly amazing and very little is absolutely terrible.

PuÈ›ini oameni sunt pur È™i simplu nesuferiÈ›i; cei care r?nesc sunt la rândul lor r?niÈ›i. În aceste condiÈ›ii, reacÈ›ia cuvenit? nu e niciodat? cinismul sau agresiunea, ci, în rarele momente când suntem în stare de ea, iubirea.

Perhaps because the origins of a certain kind of love lie in an impulse to escape ourselves and our 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 to believe in--but how can we believe in the beloved now that they believe in us?

We want our buildings to speak to us of whatever we find important and need to be reminded of.

We gaan in op reusachtige, ongrijpbare collectieve projecten, zodat we ons afvragen wat we vorig jaar deden, sterker nog, waar wij zijn gebleven en wat er van ons geworden is. We zien onze verspilde krachten onder ogen tijdens het pathos van een pensioneringsfeestje.

Curajul de a nu fi înfrânt de anxietate, de a nu-i r?ni pe alÈ›ii din frustrare, de-a nu se înfuria prea mult pe lume pentru r?nile vizibile pe care le provoac?, de-a nu înnebuni È™i de-a reuÈ™i cumva s? treac?, mai bine sau mai r?u, prin greut??ile c?sniciei - acesta e adev?ratul curaj, acesta e eroismul care nu poate fi comparat cu nimic.

Such intimate communion between our own life and the novels we read may be why Proust argued: In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. the writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have experienced in himself. And the recognition by the reader in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its veracity.

Any sadness I might have felt, any suspicion that happiness or understanding was unattainable, seemed to find ready encouragement in the sodden dark-red brick buildings and low skies tinged orange by the city's streetlights.

Hoe machtig onze technologie en hoe complex onze ondernemingen ook mogen zijn, het opmerkelijkste kenmerk van onze moderne arbeid is uiteindelijk misschien wel iets wat in onszelf zit, een aspect van onze mentaliteit: de wijdverbreide overtuiging dat ons werk ons gelukkig moet maken.

We need panels of gold and lapis, windows of coloured glass and gardens of immaculately raked gravel in order to stay true to the sincerest parts of ourselves.

The real risk is that we will fall into depression and despair; the danger is that we will lose hope in the human project. It is this kind of despondency that art is uniquely well suited to correct. Flowers in spring, blue skies, children running on the beach . . . these are the visual symbols of hope.