top of page
.png){kind=small}
"We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Psychology quotes
"Sniffing glue is a homeless nonbeliever's prayer."
"The negative way of thinking based on constant complaints, strains, and objections of discontent steals our energy."
"Words don't have the power to hurt you, unless that person meant more to you than you are willing to confess."
"Who has fear? The one who has greed has fear."
"For how long are the people who seek for the approval of others keep putting their self-worth in the hands of people?"
"Visiting the sick' is an orgasm of superiority in the contemplation of our neighbor's helplessness."
"Physiology and Psychology are not at all separate from each other. Rather they are deeply intertwined."
"Overriding the old information in your mind with new information is easy, but to actually go further than just putting a veneer over your old mindset is the way forward."
"We sometimes try to impress people we just met by not trying to impress them."
"I'm sorry, but I do hate this differentiation between the sexes. 'The modern girl has a thoroughly businesslike attitude to life' That sort of thing. It's not a bit true! Some girls are businesslike and some aren't. Some men are sentimental and muddle-headed, others are clear-headed and logical. There are just different types of brains."
Explore more quotes by Alain de Botton
"In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in a day's work for a writer. You can't put stuff out there without someone calling you a complete fool. Oh, well."
"I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it."
"We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us."
"It is according to how we are able to answer the question of what we do (normally the first enquiry we will have to field in any new acquaintance) that the quality of our reception is likely to be decided."
"We don't need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have mastered is the occasional capacity to acknowledge with good grace that we may, in one or two areas, be somewhat insane."
"Loneliness makes us more capable of true intimacy if ever better opportunities do come along. We might be isolated for now, but we'll be capable of far closer, more interesting bonds with anyone we do eventually locate."
"There is something improbably about the silence in the [subway] carriage, considering how naturally gregarious we are as a species. Still, how much kinder it is for the commuters to pretend to be absorbed in other things, rather than revealing the extent to which they are covertly evaluating, judging, condemning and desiring each other. A few venture a glance here and there, as furtively as birds pecking grain. But only if the train crashed would anyone know for sure who else had been in the carriage, what small parts of the nation's economy had been innocuously seated across the aisle just before the impact: employees of hotels, government ministries, plastic-surgery clinics, fruit nurseries and greetings-card companies."
"Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities."
bottom of page