Quotes from book
The Consolations of Philosophy

The Consolations of Philosophy
Alain de Botton

The Consolations of Philosophy is a nonfiction book by Alain de Botton. First published by Hamish Hamilton in 2000, subsequent publications have been by Penguin Books.

Alain de Botton photo

“Not everyone is worth listening to.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter I, Consolations For Unpopularity, p. 33.

Alain de Botton photo

“A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter IV, Consolation For Inadequacy, p. 168.

Alain de Botton photo

“There may be no good reason for things to be the way they are.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter I, Consolations For Unpopularity, p. 23.

Alain de Botton photo

“We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter III, Consolation For Frustration, p. 85.

Alain de Botton photo

“Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter IV, Consolation For Inadequacy, p. 148

Alain de Botton photo

“at the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter III, Consolation For Frustration, p. 80.
Context: Though the terrain of frustration may be vast — from a stubbed toe to an untimely death — at the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.

Alain de Botton photo

“In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter V, Consolation For A Broken Heart, p. 199.

Alain de Botton photo

“It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter IV, Consolation For Inadequacy, p. 163.

Alain de Botton photo

“It would scarcely be acceptable, for example, to ask in the course of an ordinary conversation what our society holds to be the purpose of work.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter I, Consolations For Unpopularity, p. 9.

Alain de Botton photo

“By travelling across frontiers, on horseback and in the imagination, Montaigne invited us to to exchange local prejudices and the self division they induced for less constraining identities as citizens of the world.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter IV, Consolation For Inadequacy, p. 146.

Alain de Botton photo

“Socrates compared living without thinking systematically to practicing an activity like pottery or shoemaking without following or even knowing of technical procedures. One would never imagine that a good pot or shoe would result from intuition alone; why then assume that the more complex task of directing one’s life could be undertaken without any sustained reflection on premises or goals? Perhaps because we don’t believe that directing our lives is in fact complicated. Certain difficult activities look very difficult from the outside, while other equally difficult activities look very easy. Arriving at sound views on how to live falls into the second category, making a pot or a shoe into the first.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), p. 21.

Alain de Botton photo

“Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter III, Consolation For Frustration, p. 83.

Alain de Botton photo

“Someone who has thought rationally and deeply about how the body works is likely to arrive at better ideas about how to be healthy than someone who has followed a hunch. Medicine presupposes a hierarchy between the confusion the layperson will be in about what is wrong with him, and the more accurate knowledge available to doctors reasoning logically. … At the heart of Epicureanism is the thought that we are as bad at answering the question “What will make me happy?” as “What will make me healthy?””

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

… Our souls do not spell out their troubles.
Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), pp. 53-54.

Alain de Botton photo

“The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter V, Consolation For A Broken Heart, p. 200.

Alain de Botton photo

“It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter I, Consolations For Unpopularity, p. 25.

Alain de Botton photo

“Happiness may be difficult to obtain. The obstacles are not primarily financial.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter II, Consolation For Not having Enough Money, p. 72.

Alain de Botton photo

“We don't exist unless there is someone who can see us existing, what we say has no meaning until someone can understand, while to be surrounded by friends is constantly to have our identity confirmed; their knowledge and care for us have the power to pull us from our numbness. In small comments, many of them teasing, they reveal they know our foibles and except them and so, in turn, accept that we have a place in the world.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter II, Consolation For Not having Enough Money, p. 57

Alain de Botton photo

“Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter II, Consolation For Not having Enough Money, p. 65.

Alain de Botton photo

“Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter III, Consolation For Frustration, p. 92.

Alain de Botton photo

“Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.”

Alain de Botton book The Consolations of Philosophy

Source: The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), Chapter III, Consolation For Frustration, p. 84.

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