Alain de Botton Quotes About Anxiety
-
as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered.
→ -
Status Anxiety: A worry, so pernicious as to be capable of ruining extended stretches of our lives, that we are in danger of failing to conform to the ideals of success laid down by our society and that we may as a result be stripped of dignity and respect; a worry that we are currently occupying too modest a rung or are about to fall to a lower one.
→ -
Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don't get on with machismo. I'm interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that's what we are.
→ -
Writing a book has about it some of the anxiety of telling a joke and having to wait several years to know whether or not it was funny.
→ -
No one is able to produce a great work of art without experience, nor achieve a worldly position immediately, nor be a great lover at the first attempt; and in the interval between initial failure and subsequent success, in the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation. We suffer because we cannot spontaneously master the ingredients of fulfillment.
→ -
Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.
→ -
We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire.
→ -
The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness".
→ -
Despite its maddeningly vague, inarticulate form, anxiety is almost always trying to tell you something useful and apposite.
→ -
Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.
→ -
Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place; our anxiety over losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the shutter.
→ -
Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another--which is not to say that we should never strive to overcome any of our anxieties or fulfil any of our desires, but rather to suggest that we should perhaps build into our strivings an awareness of the way our goals promise us a respite and a resolution that they cannot, by definition, deliver.
→ -
Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentially for reasons of status: for not showing them respect, for humiliating them.
→ -
In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.
→ -
The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be.
→ -
It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.
→
Related Authors
-
Stendhal Writer -
Friedrich Nietzsche Philologist -
Richard Dawkins Ethologist -
Gustave Flaubert Writer -
Malcolm Gladwell Journalist -
Nassim Nicholas Taleb Author -
John Armstrong British writer/philosopher -
Michel de Montaigne Writer -
Milan Kundera Writer -
Epicurus Philosopher -
Matt Ridley Journalist -
Maria Popova Writer -
Arthur Schopenhauer Philosopher -
Philippa Perry Psychotherapist -
Socrates Philosopher -
Steven Pinker Psychologist -
Marcel Proust Novelist -
Julian Barnes Writer -
Jojo Moyes Novelist -
Seneca the Younger Philosopher
Popular Topics
- Good Soldiers
- First World War
- Private Prisons
- Differentiate
- Life Being Short
- Red White And Blue
- Love Your Children
- Parking Meters
- Great Simpsons
- Airline Security
- New Year's Eve
- Japanese Gardens
- Archaeologists
- Months Of The Year
- Large Cities
- Debtors
- Inspirational Wedding
- Emcee
- Surround Sound
- Market Research