Alain de Botton Quotes

Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.

Poverty and immorality are not synonymous.

The motions of men must be such as suggest their dignity or their baseness.

A man is most accurately judged by how he treats those who are not in a position either to retaliate or to reciprocate.

To judge a man means nothing more than to ask: What content does he give to the form of humanity? What concept should we have of humanity if he were its only representative?

The Great slight the men of wit, who have nothing but wit; the men of wit despise the Great, who have nothing but greatness; the good man pities them both, if with greatness or wit they have not virtue.

If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtue it will be regarded as the symptom of virtue.

The Founders warned that a free society depends on a virtuous and moral people. The current crisis reflects that their concerns were justified.

It's not enough to have good intentions. If you want to be a good person, you have to make good decisions all the time and live a life that's worth living and that you can be proud of, and that's what I wanted.

The moral man is as guilty as the rest. His morality cannot save him.

It is generally agreed, that few men are made better by affluence or exaltation.

You can live a good life no matter what's happened to you. And so I don't know. I know there is condemnation, but I don't feel that's my place.

I firmly believe that the court should take another direction on many of these moral issues that face us.

Good and evil are essential differences of the act of the will. For good and evil pertain essentially to the will; just as truth and falsehood pertain to the reason, the act of which is distinguished essentially by the difference of truth and falsehood (according as we say that an opinion is true or false.) Consequently, good and evil volition are acts differing in species.

Indeed, what is startling about the notion of a victimless crime is that even when the behavior in question is genuinely victimless, its criminality is still affirmed by those who are eager to punish it. It is in such cases that the true genius lurking behind many of our laws stands revealed. The idea of a victimless crime is nothing more than a judicial reprise of the Christian notion of sin.

They only have lived long who have lived virtuously.

No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor, but honest.

The idea is not to do good because of the praise of men; but to do good because in doing good we develop godliness within us, and this being the case we shall become allied to godliness, which will in time become part and portion of our being.

Good deeds are many, but good lives are few.

Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.

A good life is not measured by any biblical span.

When a man has calamity upon calamity the world generally concludes that he must be a very wicked man to deserve them. Perhaps the world is right; but it is also just possible that the world ... may be wrong.

Genius does not excuse evil.

Duke Chartres used to boast that no man could have less real value for character than himself, yet he would gladly give twenty thousand pounds for a good one, because he could immediately make double that sum by means of it.

Popularity, next to virtue and wisdom, ought to be aimed at; for it is the dictate of wisdom, and is necessary to the practice of virtue inmost.