A Quote by Alain de Botton

How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them? — © Alain de Botton
How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?
Pablo Picasso was generous. But he always signed and dedicated his gifts even when he knew that people would sell them because they needed the money.
I had hoped that the board would accept Johnny Hon's offer of a loan to buy the stadium back for the club, as I think this would be best way of continuing the long tradition of Cambridge United in Cambridge - and it was a generous offer.
It may be very generous in one person to offer what it would be ungenerous in another to accept.
Yes, there is a story about Agent Orange, and we knew that it harmed our troops and we knew how long it was to get the medical community to accept that, the military to accept it, the VA to accept it.
Oh, September! It is so soon for you to lose your friends to good work and strange loves and high ambitions. The sadness of that is too grown-up for you. Like whiskey and voting, it is a dangerous and heady business, as heavy as years. If I could keep your little tribe together forever, I would. I do so want to be generous. But some stories sprout bright vines that tendril off beyond our sight, carrying the folk we love best with them, and if I knew how to accept that with grace, I would share the secret.
If beings knew, as I know, the results of sharing gifts, they would not enjoy their gifts without sharing them with others, nor would the taint of stinginess obsess the heart and stay there. even if it were their last and final bit of food, they would not enjoy its use without sharing it, if there were anyone to receive it
Veronika had noticed that a lot of people she knew would talk about the horros in other people's lives as if they were genuinely concerned to help them, but the truth was that they took pleasure in the suffering of others, because that made them believe they were happy and that life had been generous with them
I would never dream of telling people how to dress. but I do say to them, however you are dressing, accept responsibility for it. And also, unless asked, I don't judge. And if asked to judge - I would approach it socratically, I would approach it with questions.
If only you knew all the gifts that you bring to others. You would never feel sad again.
The ideas I'm working with are ideas I'm committed to. I don't know how to soft-shoe them. I don't know how to make them more palpable. I just never knew how to be one of those girls. I wish I knew how to be that sometimes, but I don't know how to be that way.
Politics is something that is bigger than many people would think and you just need to learn how to deal with them and how to accept it and how to treat them. I think that from when you are 10 years old and you look at F1 and don't realise it's there and then it is.
No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate?
I would have loved to have had a farewell match, and would have wanted the DFB to make that offer. But certain people did not plan that for me. I have to accept that.
What I learned in 'Sons' is that I would come in with a blueprint of a season and how it would go, and I realized that the looser my grip was, the better it became because the story found itself. Things happened as I wanted them to in terms of the bigger mile markers, but the fun part was I never knew how we would get there.
I am 100 percent on the side of insisting that white people step up to a different level of consciousness and commitment and the great gifts of the West and the great gifts of white culture and white community be used for a better purpose than this nonsense of supporting Trump. I insist on that. I refuse to accept that. I refuse to accept that we are going to give over 60 million people over to this guy.
Many ... have tremendous God-given gifts, but they don't focus on the development of those gifts. Who are these individuals? You've never heard of them- and you never will .
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