Alain de Botton Quotes

For people who live on expectations, to face up to their realization is something of an ordeal.

This is why you should never, ever get your hopes up. This is why you should see the glass as half empty. So when the whole thing spills, you aren’t as devastated.

A hope fulfilled is already half a disappointment.

Get used to disappointment.

Some disappointment is always the price of brave dreaming.

People expect too much. People who expect heaven always fall into hell - that is the law. Expect heaven and hell is certain. Don't expect heaven and there will never be any hell.

I wish I could tell him I understand: the higher you raise your hopes, the farther you have to fall.

I think it would be worse to expect nothing than to be disappointed.

Sometimes we need a personal crisis to reinforce in our minds what we really value and cherish. The scriptures are filled with examples of people facing crises before learning how to better serve God and others. Perhaps if you, too, search your hearts and courageously assess the priorities in your life, you may discover, as I did, that you need a better balance among your priorities.

You have just got to face the facts, don't you? I face it head-on. I knew what I was coming in to. I didn't make the impact I hoped for and I believed in.

To be alive was to be disappointed. You tried and failed and kept on trying, never knowing whether you'd ever get what you wanted. But sometimes we get what we need.

I saw that philosophy had no power to make my life more bearable. Thus I lost my belief in philosophy.

I don't believe in miracles because it's been a long time since we've had any.

Sometimes my life opened its eyes in the dark. A feeling as if crowds drew through the streets in blindness and anxiety on the way towards a miracle, while I invisibly remain standing.

I prayed like a man walking in a forest at night, feeling his way with his hands, at each step fearing to fall into pure bottomlessness forever. Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart.

I walk around feeling a sort of existential guilt all the time; and honestly for me this house is a way of feeling less guilty about the universe.

You come to a point where you realize your work doesn't save you.

We promise in proportion to our hopes, and we deliver in proportion to our fears.

I've got to be honest, with every job I do there's a part of me, that child in me, that goes, 'This is the one.' And it rarely actually is.

What disturbs and depresses young people is the hunt for happiness on the firm assumption that it must be met with in life. From this arises constantly deluded hope and so also dissatisfaction. Deceptive images of a vague happiness hover before us in our dreams, and we search in vain for their original. Much would have been gained if, through timely advice and instruction, young people could have had eradicated from their minds the erroneous notion that the world has a great deal to offer them.

I've spent a lot of time in my life dedicating myself to love or the pursuit of love or the understanding of love... I’ve stopped believing in happy endings. I’ve started believing in good days.

One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.

I'm still aspiring to be a better and better person, but I think that disappointments have made me gentler with other people and their disappointments, the stuff that they have to carry around and endure.

I keep my expectations low, so nobody disappoints me." "Yeah, well, I have high expectations." I look toward Miranda. "I guess my friends do, too." "Expectations make people miserable, so whatever yours are, lower them. You'll definitely be happier.

I'm just saying -- you can't prevent other people from disappointing you. It's bound to happen at some point. We're all only human. What you can do is decide how you're going to deal with it.