Work is most fulfilling when you're at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.
Alain de BottonHappiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.
Alain de BottonSerious journalists often imagine society is adrift because people don't know certain things. Yet often, they know but just don't care. So the task of serious journalism isn't just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.
Alain de BottonPegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis of morality, or a sort of madness?
Alain de BottonGaffe-focused journalism: revenge of intelligent people who know true evils are out there but lack the access/time to get to them.
Alain de BottonIt seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and frenetic pursuit of wealth.
Alain de Botton