top of page
"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."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Morality quotes

"The distinction between pretending you are better than you are and beginning to be better in reality is finer than moral sleuth hounds conceive."

"And there, right in the middle of it, I find 'Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.' There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven."

"When a man is getting better, he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him."

"Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I'll tell you what you are."

"Satan is never your well-wisher. Get the pleasure of making him annoyed on you by doing good deeds."

"Life is indeed terribly complicated-to a man who has lost his principles."

"If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn."

"For when once people have begun to believe that prosperity is the reward of virtue, their next calamity is obvious. If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtue it will be regarded as the symptom of virtue. Men will leave off the heavy task of making good men successful. He will adopt the easier task of making out successful men good."
Explore more quotes by Alain de Botton

"A popular perception that political news is boring is no minor issue; for when news fails to harness the curiosity and attention of a mass audience through its presentational techniques, a society becomes dangerously unable to grapple with its own dilemmas and therefore to marshal the popular will to change and improve itself."

"To appreciate life's small moments, it helps to have a sense the whole can never be made perfect."

"Whatever modern democracies may tell themselves about their commitment to free speech and to diversity of opinion, the values of a given society will uncannily match those of whichever organizations have the scale to pay for runs of thirty-second slots around the nightly news bulletin."

"We pick our friends not only because they are kind and enjoyable company, but also, perhaps more importantly, because they understand us for who we think we are."

"Few in this world are ever simply nasty; those who hurt us are themselves in pain. The appropriate response is hence never cynicism nor aggression but, at the rare moments one can manage it, always love."

"It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do."

"On account of its scale and complexity, the world will always outstrip the capacity of any single body to ask fertile questions of it."

"It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us."
bottom of page