Work is most fulfilling when you're at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing. Alain de Botton More Quotes by Alain de Botton More Quotes From Alain de Botton Blind impatience is equally evident in the fruit section. Our ancestors might have delighted in the occasional handful of berries found on the underside of a bush in late summer, viewing it as a sign of the unexpected munificence of a divine creator, but we became modern when we gave up on awaiting sporadic gifts from above and sought to render any pleasing sensation immediately and repeatedly available. Alain de Botton berries summer might I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas. Alain de Botton communication challenges ideas After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come. Alain de Botton strive age men When work is not going well, it's useful to remember that our identities stretch beyond what is on the business card, that we were people long before we became workers - and will continue to be human once we have put our tools down forever. Alain de Botton forever long people If it is true that love is the pursuit in another of qualities we lack in ourselves, then in our love of someone from another culture, one ambition may be to weld ourselves more closely to values missing from our own culture. Alain de Botton ambition missing love-is You need a long hard day's work to reveal the logic of the craving for very bad tv and alcohol. Alain de Botton alcohol long needs I assemble my ideas in pieces on a computer file, then gradually find a place for them on a piece of scaffolding I erect. Alain de Botton computer pieces ideas as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered. Alain de Botton triggers shifting anxiety [T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister than our habit of looking at them in the wrong way, through lenses clouded by distraction, exhaustion and fear, which blind us to the fact that they are really, despite a thousand differences, just altered versions of ourselves: fellow fragile, uncertain, flawed beings likewise craving love and in urgent need of forgiveness. Alain de Botton assessment differences way On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community we live in. We tend to become good or bad depending on the cues sent out within a particular space. Alain de Botton atmosphere community space Despite its maddeningly vague, inarticulate form, anxiety is almost always trying to tell you something useful and apposite. Alain de Botton always-trying anxiety form We accept the need to train extensively to fly a plane; but think instinct should be enough for marrying and raising kids. Alain de Botton kids needs thinking When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard Dawkins. Alain de Botton grew-up father children It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster. Alain de Botton sick writing book The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us. Alain de Botton speak knowing art Perhaps because the origins of a certain kind of love lie in an impulse to escape ourselves and out 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 in whom to believe, but how can we continue to believe the the beloved now that they believe in us? Alain de Botton beautiful believe lying We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it). Alain de Botton secular-society museums ideas For paranoia about 'what other people think' : remember that only some hate, a very few love - and almost all just don't care. Alain de Botton hate people thinking The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. Alain de Botton longing stronger destiny Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that the impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence. Alain de Botton simplicity belief writing
