Alain de Botton Quotes

i can't understand her" well son, you might as well try to understand the sun". derived form the book:fires of heaven by robert jordan.

Every being cries out in silence to be read differently. Do not be indifferent to these cries.

He's very nice. He's something I replied. She considered this zipping her purse shut. Then she said Well everyone is. Everyone is Something. For some reason that stuck with me simple and yet not every since she'd said it. It was like a puzzle as well two vague words with one clear one between them.

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.

The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence.

The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.

One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!

Truth is something which can't be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning.

I see too deep and too much.

What we perceive things to be when they come out of our mouth is not what the listener perceives it to be. They think it differently. They're not your blood. They're not your mind. You get in an argument.

I cannot be understood in three minutes.

Those who understand only what can be explained understand very little.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

Understanding is but the sum of misunderstandings.

Interpretation blocks reception while masquerading as reception. Rightness does not need interpretation; it requires simple acceptance and nothing else.

You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him.

There's no more usual basis of union than mutual misunderstanding.

Deep is the well of truth and long does it take to know what has fallen into its depths.

I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see—and I don't.

Do not underestimate the human being, who sometimes appears so simple. Even with sight as sharp as an eagle, a mind as sharp as a razor, senses more powerful than gods, hearing that can catch the music and the lamentations of life, your knowledge of humanity will never be total.

You know people. Most of them don’t hear anything. Those who hear - don’t listen. A few who listen - don’t understand. And those who could understand… they don’t care.

Just because you did not understand us, it did not mean we were wrong.