Sam Rose > Sam's Quotes

“Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.”
― Alain de Botton

“The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.”
― Alain de Botton

“We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.”
― Alain De Botton, On Love

“It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.”
― Alain de Botton, On Love

“You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.”
― Alain de Botton

“There are things that are not spoken about in polite society. Very quickly in most conversations you'll reach a moment where someone goes, 'Oh, that's a bit heavy,' or 'Eew, disgusting.' And literature is a place where that stuff goes; where people whisper to each other across books, the writer to the reader. I think that stops you feeling lonely – in the deeper sense, lonely.”
― Alain de Botton

“Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.”
― alain de botton

“The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness".”
― Alain de Botton

“The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.”
― Alain de Botton

“Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.”
― Alain de Botton

“Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.”
― Alain de Botton

“Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.”
― Alain de Botton

“The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.”
― Alain de Botton

“Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first - the story of our quest for sexual love - is well known and well charted, its vagaries form the staple of music and literature, it is socially accepted and celebrated. The second - the story of our quest for love from the world - is a more secret and shameful tale. If mentioned, it tends to be in caustic, mocking terms, as something of interest chiefly to envious or deficient souls, or else the drive for status is interpreted in an economic sense alone. And yet this second love story is no less intense than the first, it is no less complicated, important or universal, and its setbacks are no less painful. There is heartbreak here too.”
― Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety

“There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.”
― Alain de Botton

“Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.”
― Alain de Botton

“One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?”
― Alain de Botton

“What is grief for? Mechanical explanation: Pain directs my attention to an injury or insult and subsides once the injury or insult is mended or neutralized. The pain of loss subsides if I replace what I lost or adjust permanently to accommodate the loss. Evolutionary explanation: Grief is a byproduct of attachment in social animals. The grief of loss teaches me to prevent potential loss of kin. Religious explanation: God, the engineer of all that happens, knows best. All life is but a gauntlet ere I live again in heaven. Real explanation: Love abides. There is no other solace. •”
― Sarah Manguso, The Guardians: An Elegy

“When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“For at times it happens that some trifle will cause as much suffering to one as a great trial will to another; little things can bring much distress to persons who have sensitive natures. If you are not like them, do not fail to be compassionate.”
― Teresa of Ávila, St. Teresa of Avila The Way of Perfection: Study Edition