Quotes from Alain de Botton

Science should matter to us not only because it helps us to control parts of the world, but also because is shows us things that we will -never- master. [...] Nightly - perhaps after the main news bulletin and before the celebrity quiz - we might observe a moment of silence in order to contemplate the 200 to 400 billion stars in our galaxies and the 3 septillion stars in the universe. [...] majestically unaware of everything we are and consolingly unaffected by all that tears us apart.

ai nevoie de o anumit? for?? ca s? plângi, de încrederea c? pân? la urm? o s?-È›i poÈ›i st?vili lacrimile.

even if the whole of the man-made world could, through relentless effort and sacrifice, be modelled to rival St Mark's Square, even if we could spend the rest of our lives in the Villa Rotonda or the Glass House, we would still often be in a bad mood. 7.

Nici el, nici ea nu trebuie s? fie perfecÈ›i, e nevoie doar s?-È™i dea din când în când câte-un semn care s? arate c? È™tiu c? e greu de tr?it cu ei.

Maturity begins with the capacity to sense and, in good time and without defensiveness, admit to our own craziness. If we are not regularly deeply embarrassed by who we are, the journey to self-knowledge hasn't begun.

In Salisbury's formulation, every element in the state had an anatomical counterpart: the ruler was the head, the parliament was the heart, the court was the sides, officials and judges were the eyes, the army was the hands and the peasantry and labouring classes were the feet.

Alas, Madame Straus, there are no certainties, even grammatical ones.… [O]nly that which bears the imprint of our choice, our taste, our uncertainty, our desire and our weakness can be beautiful.

Thus was born an astonishing new idea that governments justify their existence only by promoting possibilities for prosperity and happiness among all those they rule over.

It's the permanent female problem, whether or not to trust a man when he's seducing. You may like the man without trusting him, but one thing you want to avoid is getting hurt again.

An idealism previously directed at gods and spirits has been rerouted towards human subjects – an ostensibly generous gesture nevertheless freighted with forbidding and brittle consequences, since it is no simple thing for any human being to honour over a lifetime the perfections he or she might have hinted at to an imaginative observer in the street, the office or the adjoining aeroplane seat.

In democracies, by contrast, the propaganda of the press and public opinion relentlessly promised servants that they, too, could reach the pinnacles of society and make their fortune as industrialists, judges, scientists or even presidents.

at the beginning of the eighteenth century, a word came to prominence by means of which it became possible to indicate a specific response towards precipices and glaciers, night skies and boulder-strewn deserts. In their presence one was likely to experience, and could count on being understood if one reported that one had felt, a sense of the sublime.

Agora ele sabe que as ideias românticas são uma receita de desastre. Sua aptidão para o casamento baseia-se em critérios bem diferentes. Ele está apto para o casamento porque — para começar a lista — desistiu da perfeição.

Infatuations aren't delusions.

To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognize its harmony with our own prized internal song

Never have they publicly fielded the one question that truly preoccupies them: "what is it like to have been married awhile?

the playthings of the forces that laid out the

However, the immediacy with which aesthetic judgments arise should not fool us into assuming that their origins are entirely natural or their verdicts unalterable.

ReacÈ›ia celorlalÈ›i la purtarea noastr? este comparabil? cu o oglind? pentru c? ne întoarce o imagine a noastr? pe care singuri nu suntem în stare s? o vedem. De asta ceilalÈ›i sunt indispensabili, ca s? ne dea ceva ce nu putem înÈ›elege singuri, imaginea propriului caracter. Cine sunt eu f?r? ca ceilalÈ›i s? îmi dea un indiciu?

Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.

Our fear of failing at various tasks would likely be much less were it not for our awareness of how harshly failure tends to be viewed and interpreted by others.

1828 Turns forty. 'After his fortieth year,' he consoles himself, 'any man of merit Ã¢â'¬Â¦ will hardly be free from a certain touch of misanthropy.

The rich believe that their money will insulate them from setbacks and frustrations, and that's one of the absurdist expectations of all.

Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who theorised that a society would grow wealthy to the extent that its members forfeited general knowledge in favour of fostering individual ability in narrowly constricted fields.