Quotes from Alain de Botton

we will have nothing substantial to offer anyone else so long as we have not first mastered the art of being patient midwives to our own thoughts.

Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or a bicycle.

It just appears natural to be struck by the beauty of some things and to be left cold by others.

In the course of his own life and it''s misfortunes, he (a man) will look less at his own individual lot than at the lot of mankind as a whole, and accordingly will conduct himself ... more as a knower than as a sufferer. - Schopenhauer

Ideal ar fi ca arta s? ne dea r?spunsurile pe care nu le primim de la oameni.

Griefs, at the moment when they change into ideas, lose some of their power to injure our heart.

Madame Verdurin might come to understand the mechanisms by which people are excluded from social circles; she could learn to make light of her frustration, confess to it directly, even throw out a teasing remark to Swann asking him to return with a signed menu, and in the process might become so charming that an invitation to the Élysée would make its way to her after all.

Even if we find literature the finest of substitutes, infinitely better than anything else yet invented, it still pays to recognise that substitute is what it might primarily be, that writing is in certain ways an act of very polite and artful revenge on a world too busy to listen and that we would never develop such fierce bookish ambitions if we had not first been let down by those we needed so much to rely upon.

In any case, unless we learn how to appreciate what we have, there is no point striving for more.

If love is to be defined as a genuine concern for the well-being of another person, then it must surely be deemed compatible with granting permission for an often harassed and rather browbeaten husband to step off the elevator on the eighteenth floor in order to enjoy ten minutes of rejuvenating cunnilingus with a near stranger.

If as adults we have even a measure of mental health, it is almost certainly because, when we were helpless infants, there was a person (to whom we essentially owe our lives) who pushed their needs to one side for a time in order to focus wholly on ours. They interpreted what we could not quite say, they guessed what might be ailing us, they settled and consoled us. They keyp the chaos and noise at bay and cut the world up into manageable pieces for us.

The only problem with unrestricted choice, however, is that it tends not to lie so far from outright chaos.

A precondition of becoming knowledgeable may be a resignation and accommodation to the extent of one's ignorance, an accommodation which requires a sense that this ignorance need not be permanent, or indeed need not be taken personally, as a reflection of one's inherent capacities.

Journeys are the midwives of thought.

Jarenlang kwam ik bij het boodschappen doen langs een huis dat weliswaar een van de lelijkste gebouwen was dat ik ooit heb gezien, maar me ook meer over architectuur heeft geleerd dan menig meesterwerk.

Because we always lack more than we have, and because there are always more people who don't invite us than who do.

we shouldn't be surprised if this kind of stoicism is of no interest whatsoever to the news, for it has sound commercial incentives for overemphasizing our vulnerability.

The Romantic ideas are, he knows now, a recipe for disaster. His readiness for marriage is based on a quite different set of criteria. He is ready for marriage because—to begin the list—he has given up on perfection.

Despite their claims to a purely scientific and reasoned approach, the relationship of Modernist architects to their work remained at base a romantic one; they looked to architecture to support a way of life that appealed to them. Their domestic buildings were conceived as stage sets for actors in an idealised drama about contemporary existence.

The reason why life may be judged to be trivial although at certain moments it seems to us so beautiful is that we form our judgement, ordinarily, not on the evidence of life itself but of those quite different images which preserve nothing of life—and therefore we judge it disparagingly.

that they will be patient and show compassion, that they will trust and forgive, and that they will remain best friends and loyal companions until death.

The terms avoidant and anxious are hardly typical in a love story, but if Romantic is taken to mean "helpful to the progress of love," then they turn out to be among the most romantic words Kirsten and Rabih will ever stumble upon, for they enable them to grasp patterns that have been destructively at work between them every day of their married lives.

O notorie inabilitate de a-È™i exprima emoÈ›iile îl face pe om singurul animal capabil de sinucidere.

One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us seriously happy. 2.     Chloe