{"author":"Alain de Botton","author_id":"Alain+de+Botton","total_quotes":232,"quotes":[{"text":"Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpredictable soil of medieval Europe, modern populations have nonetheless shown a remarkable capacity to feel that neither who they are nor what they have is quite enough.","author":"Alain de Botton","tags":["blessings","dissatisfaction","modern-age","possibilities","wealth"],"id":2280,"author_id":"Alain+de+Botton"},{"text":"For us to deem a work of architecture elegant, it is hence not enough that it look simple: we must feel that the simplicity it displays has been hard won, that it flows from the resolution of demanding technical or natural predicament. Thus we call the Shaker staircase in Pleasant Hill elegant because we know--without ever having constructed one ourselves--that a staircase is a site complexity, and that combinations of treads, risers and banisters rarely approach the sober intelligibility of the Sharkers' work. We deem a modern Swiss house elegant because we not how seamlessly its windows have been joined to their concrete walls, and how neatly the usual clutter of construction has been resolved away. We admire starkly simple works that we intuit would, without immense effort, have appeared very complicated. (p 209).","author":"Alain de Botton","tags":["architecture","complexity","complicated","construction","design","elegance","intuition","simplicity"],"id":3289,"author_id":"Alain+de+Botton"},{"text":"For the rest of history, for most of us, our bright promise will always fall short of being actualised; it will never earn us bountiful sums of money or beget exemplary objects or organisations....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.","author":"Alain de Botton","tags":["brilliance","failure","flaws","promise","success"],"id":5308,"author_id":"Alain+de+Botton"},{"text":"It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and frenetic pursuit of wealth.","author":"Alain de Botton","tags":["achievements","fame","folly","power","rank","ruins","society","wealth"],"id":7490,"author_id":"Alain+de+Botton"},{"text":"We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers... Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness...","author":"Alain de Botton","tags":["education"],"id":8824,"author_id":"Alain+de+Botton"},{"text":"It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes you hate humanity - but when you see people at their work they elicit respect, whether it's a mechanic, a stonemason or an accountant.","author":"Alain de Botton","tags":["work","hate","humanity "],"id":10075,"author_id":"Alain+de+Botton"},{"text":"Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.","author":"Alain de Botton","tags":["control","despair","foresight","hope","surrender"],"id":12150,"author_id":"Alain+de+Botton"},{"text":"The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren't there. The answers are there in the morning.","author":"Alain de Botton","tags":["answers","brain","mind","questions","subconscious","thinking"],"id":15574,"author_id":"Alain+de+Botton"},{"text":"Marriage: a deeply peculiar and ultimately unkind thing to inflict on anyone one claims to care for.","author":"Alain de Botton","tags":["love","marriage","matrimony","relationships","soulmates","till-death-do-its-part"],"id":17211,"author_id":"Alain+de+Botton"},{"text":"Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.","author":"Alain de Botton","tags":["books","reading","right-moment","timing"],"id":19957,"author_id":"Alain+de+Botton"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":232,"pages":24,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}