Alain de Botton Quotes

Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.

Alain de Botton

• Spring

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• When you are young, hone your craft and write shorter pieces instead of novels, because it's really hard to finish a novel.

  

  Laini Taylor
  • Young
  • Finish
  • Craft

• I believe that if you eat well, you work even better.

  

  Ferran Adria
  • Work
  • Believe
  • I Believe

• There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.

  

  Samuel Butler
  • Thought
  • Nothing
  • Absence

• I had a mind inquiring enough to question world events, as well as the passion fostered by my background to care, but I lacked the emotional maturity to process these things. That made me ripe for Islamist recruitment. Into this ferment came my recruiter, himself straight out of a London medical college.

  

  Maajid Nawaz
  • World
  • Mind
  • College

• I remember 'Def Comedy Jam' being a big deal and kids talking about it in school, but it was never, 'I want to do that.'

  

  Hannibal Buress
  • School
  • Kids
  • Remember

• Racism is everywhere - the older generations in Malaysia still say things like, 'She's darker-skinned; maybe don't marry her,' and it's very judgmental. A lot of girls do try to get fairness cream to lighten their skin, and I'm against all of that.

  

  Yuna
  • Racism
  • Generations
  • Fairness

• We firmly believe the environmental issues cannot be addressed without extensive public participation, but people need to be informed before they can get involved.

  

  Ma Jun
  • People
  • Believe
  • Environmental

• Imagine if I'd said, 'I have to be the best actress - I want that and nothing else.' I never would have directed. I never would have produced. I never would have done a beauty line. I would have just worried about getting a job or been frustrated that I wasn't getting the job that I wanted. I was ready to be a businesswoman.

  

  Salma Hayek
  • Done
  • Job
  • Best

• The trouble with conservatives is that too many of them come to Washington thinking they are going to drain the swamp, only to discover that Washington is a hot tub.

  

  M. Stanton Evans
  • Thinking
  • Trouble
  • Discover

• I don't program or code or anything like that.

  

  Rand Paul
  • Like
  • Anything
  • Code

• I guess what I like is mostly country & western or else stuff that has a real blues feel to it.

  

  Sam Shepard
  • Country
  • Real
  • Blues

• Trying on pants is one of the most humiliating things a man can suffer that doesn't involve a woman.

  

  Larry David
  • Trying
  • Man
  • Woman

• Are we disheartened by the breakup of the family? Nobody who ever met my family is.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • Family
  • Breakup

• It just gripes me hollow, the way God always sneaks in to take the credit.

  

  Orson Scott Card
  • God

• No government functions without the grease of corruption.

  

  Carlos Fuentes
  • Grease

• I walked into a gunfight with a knife to kill you, and cut you so fast when your blood spilled it was still blue.

  

  Eminem
  • Blue

• In the inescapable flux, there is something that abides; in the overwhelming permanence, there is an element that escapes into flux. Permanence can be snatched only out of flux; and the passing moment can find its adequate intensity only by its submission to permanence.

  

  Alfred North Whitehead

• One can insult an honest man or an honest woman, but to tell a thief that he is a thief is merely la constation d'un fait The establishing of a fact.

  

  Leo Tolstoy

• Now I see that there is no such thing as love unreturn'd. The pay is certain, one way or another.

  

  Walt Whitman
  • Love
  • See
  • For Him

• I write easily, let's put it that way. And in a novel particularly, the characters take over. And they tell me what to say and they tell me what they're doing. And I'm a third of the way into a novel and then I just let the characters finish it for me.

  

  Andrew Greeley

• The wolf cares not, how many the sheep be.

  

  Plato
  • Wolf
  • Sheep
  • Cares

• The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.

  

  Paul Valery
  • Spring

• No one is immune from the larger events of his or her time - the Depression, World War II, civil rights, Vietnam, the spring of 1989 in China. These events intrude upon our lives and radically affect our directions.

  

  Paul Tsongas
  • Time
  • World
  • War

• Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.

  

  Alain de Botton
  • Spring