Quotes from Alain de Botton

Those among us who chose to stay single should not be thought un-Romantic. Indeed, we may be among the very most Romantic of all, which is precisely why we find the possibilities open to us especially unappetising. It's in the end the fervent Romantics who should be especially careful of ending up in mediocre relationships: relationships best suit the kind of people who don't expect too much from them.

Though it is a sign of some maturity to know how to love and live alongside someone, it may be a sign of even greater maturity to recognise that this is something one isn't in the end psychologically really capable of – as a good portion of us simply aren't. Retiring oneself voluntarily, in order to save others (and oneself) from the consequences of one's inner emotional turmoil may be the true sign of a great and kindly soul.

We seem unwilling to allow for the possibility that the glory of our species may lie not only in the launching of satellites, the founding of companies, and the manufacturing of miraculously thin semiconductors but also in an ability—even if it is widely distributed among billions—to spoon yogurt into small mouths, find missing socks, clean toilets, deal with tantrums, and wipe congealed things off tables.

So if speaking in clichés is problematic, it is because the world itself contains a far broader range of rainfalls, moons, sunshines, and emotions than stock expressions either capture or teach us to expect. Proust's novel is filled with people who behave in un-stock ways.

Ebeveynlerin sevgisi ve anlay??? yeterli olsa, insan olduÄŸu yerde sayar ve zamanla soyu tükenirdi. Türün hayatta kalmas?, çocuklar?n nihayetinde bundan b?kmas?na dayan?r. Daha tatmin edici sevgi ve heyecan kaynaklar? bulma umuduyla dünyaya at?lmalar?na baÄŸl?d?r.

Those who love and those who are happy are not the same.

A fine remedy for our anxieties over our low status in society may be to travel—whether literally or figuratively, by viewing works of art—through the gigantic spaces of the world.

Page 25 But if we accept the legitimacy of the subject nevertheless, then a new and contentious series of questions at once opens up.

Everything that has happened to others will happen to him, too. No one gets away.

But I could I tell her so in a way that would suggest the distinctive nature of my attraction? Words like love or devotion or infatuation we're exhausted by the weight of successive love stories, but the layers imposed on them through the uses of others.

Bu ça??n garipliklerinden biri, arkadaÅŸl?k kurman?n en kolay yolunun genelde kar??n?zdakinden soyunmas?n? istemek olmas?.

Ai không c?m th?y h? th?n khi nhìn l?i b?n thân n?m ngoái thì có l? ng??i Ä'ó ?? h?c không ??.

To assess a nation through its economic data is a little like re-envisaging oneself via the results of a blood test, whereby the traditional markers of personality and character are set aside and it is made clear that one is at base, where it really counts, a creatinine level of 3.2, a lactate dehydrogenase of 927, a leukocyte (per field) of 2 and a C-reactive protein of 2.42.

We believe, as Nietzsche put it, that 'higher is not allowed to grow out of the lower, is not allowed to have grown at all .. everything first-rate must be causa sui [the cause of itself].

love is a skill rather than an enthusiasm.

What renders the ships and ports invisible is an unwarranted prejudice which deems it peculiar to express overly powerful feelings of admiration towards a gas tanker or a paper mill – or indeed towards almost any aspect of the labouring world.

The moral? To recognize that our best chance of contentment lies in taking up the wisdom offered to us in coded form through our coughs, allergies, social gaffes, and emotional betrayals, and to avoid the ingratitude of those who blame the peas, the bores, the time, and the weather.

Ai không c?m th?y h? th?n khi nhìn l?i b?n thân n?m ngoái thì có l? ng??i Ä'ó Ä'ã h?c không ??.

If a traveller was to feel personally involved with (rather than guiltily obedient towards) 'the walls and ceilings of the church decorated with nineteenth-century frescoes and paintings...', he or she would have to be able to connect these facts--as boring as a fly--with one of the large, blunt questions to which genuine curiosity must be anchored.

Prejudice and ethnic strife feed off abstraction.

He feeds her his worlds.

All the seriousness of his plans depends on a steady flow of blood to his brain through vulnerable network of capillaries.

It is of course the height of absurdity to blame them. But this is to misunderstand the rules under which love operates. It is because we cannot scream at the forces who are really responsible that we get angry with those we are sure will best tolerate us for blaming them. We take it out on the very nicest, most sympathetic, most loyal people in the vicinity, the ones least likely to have harmed us, but the ones most likely to stick around while we pitilessly rant at them.

What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent technological and sociological revolution against which it is set, and which serves to strip us of any possible faith in the permanence of our labours. Our ancestors could believe that their achievements had a chance of bearing up against the flow of events.