A Quote by Alain de Botton

The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort. — © Alain de Botton
The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.
My books are about ordinary people placed in extraordinary situations who are able to draw upon their inner reserves to challenge the status-quo in life and navigate compelling human relationships.
The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have. So they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.
Goodness is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Light is stronger than darkness. Life is stronger than death. Victory is ours through Him who loved us.
Never before has the seductive market way of life held such sway in nearly every sphere of American life. This marketing way of life promotes addictions to stimulation and obsessions with comfort and convenience ... centered primarily around bodily pleasures and status rankings. ... The common denominator is a rugged and ragged individualism and rapacious hedonism in quest of a perennial "high" in body and mind.
My ideas come, and there is a deep desire to create. Sometimes it's stronger than me. Sometimes I have to do projects that I know are almost impossible but I still have to do them. It's like a muscle - if you are a dancer, you need to dance, if you are a creative person, you need to create. It's part of your life.
We come together, we create our families, we chose our mates out of the desire to form a life together. Love takes many forms, wears many faces, but when it's real, when it touches your heart, you will know it and--with hope--embrace it. Love is stronger than hate, love is stronger than anger. Love is stronger than all artificial divisions that exist n our world.
The colonial period has been the proving ground in America for the new social history, which concentrates on the ordinary doings of ordinary people rather than on high culture and high politics. Unfortunately ordinary people, almost by definition, leave behind only faint traces of their existence.
There is one thing you know for sure, one fact that never fails to comfort you: the worst day of your life wasn't in there, in that mess. And it will do you good to remember the best day of your life wasn't in there, either. But another person brought you closer to those borders than you had been, and maybe that's not such a bad thing.
Mankind's feeling of responsibility to create a decent life and make it worth living with dignity has always been stronger than the will to kill life.
For Muslims, the source of everything we do is based in the belief that there is one God, and this one God is revealing to us there is one humanity with equal dignity for each, beyond faith, color and social status. Whatever your status, color, background or religion, you have the same dignity.
You need to push yourself, put yourself in uncomfortable situations rather than stick to your comfort zone.
No matter how much we try to run away from this thirst for the answer to life, for the meaning of life, the intensity only gets stronger and stronger. We cannot escape these spiritual hungers.
It's not all been rosy; I've had difficult situations where I've failed. But when you fail you learn a lot about yourself and come back stronger. The message is: life need not have limits. Having an opportunity in life is important but what defines you is what you do with that opportunity.
I have not seen much dignity in the process by which we die. The quest to achieve true dignity fails when our bodies fail.
In truth I suspect that merely slowing down is not a very satisfying answer. What I need has less to do with my pace of life than my peace of life. At any speed, I crave a deep and lasting inner peace. And if it's solace I'm after, I don't need to pace myself like a turtle, change jobs or set up house on a quiet island. It is usually frenetic living, not high energy, that robs my peace of mind.
If I had to give my advice to someone else starting the business, my standard answer is so, so true, and that's to learn the fundamental basics of this business. If you don't have a fundamental base to build upon, your house will fall, and you will never truly achieve the status you desire.
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