Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.
Alain de BottonOur sense of what is valuable will hence be radically distorted if we must perpetually condemn as tedious everything we lack, simply because we lack it.
Alain de BottonIt seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one is producing a complete disaster.
Alain de BottonIf optimism is important, it's because many outcomes are determined by how much of it we bring to the task. It is an important ingredient of success. This flies in the face of the elite view that talent is the primary requirement of a good life, but in many cases the difference between success and failure is determined by nothing more than our sense of what is possible and the energy we can muster to convince others of our due. We might be doomed not by a lack of skill, but by an absence of hope!
Alain de Botton