Philippe Alain Michaud Quotes

By associating votive offerings with sacred images, the Catholic Church, it its wisdom, had left its formerly pagan flock a legitimate outlet for the inveterate impulse to associate oneself, or one's own effigy, with the Divine as expressed in the palpable form of the human image. ~ Aby Warburg

I've frowned at the idea of breaking records, the first one to do something, or do it longer, higher, more difficult. ~ Philippe Petit

It is hope
with regard to our careers, our love lives, our children, our politicians, and our planet
that is primarily to blame for angering and embittering us. The incompatibility between the grandeur of our aspirations and the mean reality of our condition generates the violent disappointments which rack our days and etch themselves in lines of acrimony across our faces. ~ Alain De Botton

There is a child inside me that wants to come out and do something to surprise all the adults. ~ Philippe Petit

When I climb a building, I've been there already, and carefully planned how to start the climb as well as how to do it. ~ Alain Robert

To one's enemies: I hate myself more than you ever could. ~ Alain De Botton

Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person. ~ Alain De Botton

The longing for company may be no less powerful or irresponsible in its effects than the sexual motive once was. ~ Alain De Botton

All lives are difficult; what makes some of them fulfilled as well is the manner in which pains have been met. Every pain is an indistinct signal that something is wrong, which may engender either a good or bad result depending on the sagacity and strength of mind of the sufferer. Anxiety may precipitate panic, or an accurate analysis of what is amiss. A sense of injustice may lead to murder, or to a ground-breaking work of economic theory. Envy may lead to bitterness, or to a decision to compete with a rival and the production of a masterpiece. As ~ Alain De Botton

We could say that love is a tenacious adventure. The adventurous side is necessary, but equally so is the need for tenacity. To give up at the first hurdle, the first quarrel, is only to distort love. Real love is one that triumphs lastingly, sometimes painfully, over the hurdles erected by time, space and the world. ~ Alain Badiou

The greater part of our anxieties stems from an exaggerated sense of the importance of our own projects and concerns. We are tortured by our ideals and by a punishingly high-minded sense of the gravity of what we are doing. ~ Alain De Botton

Every man needs to find a peak, a mountain top or a remote island of his own choosing that he reaches under his own power alone in his own good time. ~ Alain Gerbault

I trust my wife's judgement," Matthew said firmly.
"That's what Philippe says about Granny," Gallowglass muttered under his breath. "Just before all hell breaks lose. ~ Deborah Harkness

By what right do I, who have wasted this day, make claims on tomorrow? ~ Alain-Fournier

Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess. ~ Alain De Botton

It is impossible to remain indifferent to Japanese culture. It is a different civilisation where all you have learnt must be forgotten. It is a great intellectual challenge and a gorgeous sensual experience. ~ Alain Ducasse

Anyway, i'm French so i'm more entitled to get annoyed quickly when someone comes to me with a request, and by making a quick disposable statement, i am feeling better about my position. ~ Alain Bremond-Torrent

Our weak understanding of our needs is aggravated by what Epicurus termed 'idle opinions' of those around us, which do not reflect the natural hierarchy of our needs, emphasizing luxury and riches, seldom friendship, freedom and thought. The prevalence of idle opinion is no coincidence. It is in the interest of commercial enterprises to slew the hierarchy of our needs, to promote a material vision of good and downplay an unsaleable one. ~ Alain De Botton

In marked contrast to the relaxed, typically Latin attitude of the Dominicans the Protestant missionaries were still proceeding at full blast with the fight for souls. These North American evangelists of strictly fundamentalist inclination combined in a curious fashion strict adhesion to the literal meaning of the Old Testament With mastery of the most modern technology. Most of them came from small towns in the Bible Belt, armed with unshakably clear consciences and a rudimentary smattering of theology, convinced that they alone were the repositories of Christian values now abolished elsewhere. Totally ignorant of the vast world, despite their transplantation, and taking the few articles of morality accepted in the rural Amenca of their childhoods to be a universal credo, they strove bravely to spread these principles of salvation all around them.
Their rustic faith was well served by a flotilla of light aircraft, a powerful radio, an ultra-modern hospital and four-wheel-drive vehicles -- in short, all the equipment that a battalion of crusaders dropped behind enemy lines needed. ~ Philippe Descola

I am very attracted by the mysterious landscape of Easter Island. Not only because it is a piece of land that is further away from another, but also because of the beautiful statues of Moai that are there. To do a beautiful walk there, I would have to involve the Moai, and the Rapa Nui people who live on the island. ~ Philippe Petit

I don't do the same food in Tokyo that I do in Vegas and vice versa. If I did that, two weeks later I would have no customers. ~ Alain Ducasse

To tell the truth, girls are no longer the way they used to be. They play gangsters, nowadays, just like boys. They organize rackets. They plan holdups and practice karate. They will rape defenseless adolescents. They wear pants ... Life has become impossible. ~ Alain Robbe-Grillet

You can resist to girls but it is harder when they are ginger. ~ Alain Bremond-Torrent

What I know is that if I was asked to teach mathematics in French for a week to young kids, I would do my homework and I think I could do a decent job. I don't think a degree in education would make me a better teacher. I sometimes teach in college. I don't teach for long periods of time, but I give workshops and I think I can communicate stuff. So, it's about communicating. ~ Philippe Falardeau

It may be a sign that two people have stopped loving one another (or at least stopped wishing to make the effort that constitutes ninety per cent of love) when they are no longer able to spin differences into jokes. Humour lined the walls of irritation between our ideals and the reality: behind every joke, there was a warning of difference, of disappointment even, but it was a difference that had been defused - and could therefore be passed over without the need for a pogrom. ~ Alain De Botton

Life should be lived on the edge of life. You have to exercise rebellion: to refuse to tape yourself to rules, to refuse your own success, to refuse to repeat yourself, to see every day, every year, every idea as a true challenge - and then you are going to live your life on a tightrope. ~ Philippe Petit

Visitors are informed, but what do they feel? I can't find the warmth of Versailles in such blandness, and I don't think tourist come here in search of information at all. The bus-loads of Japanese tourists and honest grandmothers don't visit the Queen's bedroom to learn about the particular type of canopy bed she slept in or the sort of wood it is made from; they come to relive a moment in the queen's life. ~ Alain Baraton

Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test. ~ Alain De Botton

We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us. ~ Alain De Botton

He gave his father a gentle shove. "Up the stairs."
"Jesper?" said a voice from beneath the nearest table. A pretty blonde girl looked up from where she was crouched on the floor.
"Madeleine?" Jesper said. "Madeleine Michaud?"
"You said we'd have breakfast!"
"I had to go to Fjerda."
"Fjerda?"
Jesper headed up the stairs after Wylan, then poked his head back into the reading room. "If I live, I'll buy you waffles."
"You don't have enough money to buy her waffles," Wylan grumbled.
"Be quiet. We're in a library. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Dreams reveal we never quite get 'over' anything: it's all still in there somewhere. ~ Alain De Botton

The political wife came forward and publicly vouched for her straying man. If she could continue to trust and believe in him, the public could too – or so the script went. ~ Anne Michaud

Camera-phones are like nuclear power plants: bad people will turn them into evil, good people will put them to good use. ~ Philippe Kahn

We have to replace beauty, which is a cultural concept, with goodness, which is a humanist concept. ~ Philippe Starck

How comforting to witness a fictional person (who is also, miraculously, ourselves as we read) suffering the same agonies of a saccharine dismissal and, importantly, surviving. ~ Alain De Botton

Rather than saying 'I hate mess', it might draw more compassion to say, 'mess terrifies me as a harbinger of catastrophe'. ~ Alain De Botton

In Montaigne's redrawn portrait of the adequate, semi-rational human being, it is possible to speak no Greek, fart, change one's mind after a meal, get bored with books, know none of the ancient philosophers and mistake Scipios. A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough. ~ Alain De Botton

Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn't know rejection and humiliation so intimately. ~ Alain De Botton

APPLES SCENT,
You arrive in the basement. Immediatly it catches you. Apples are here, lying on fruit trays, turned crates. You didn't think about it. You had no wish to be flooded by this melancholic wave. But you can't resist. Apple scent is a breaker. How could you manage without this childhood, bitter and sweet ?
Shrivelled fruits surely are delicious, from this feak dryness where candied taste seems to have wormed in each wrinkle. But you don't wish to eat them. Particularly don't turn into an identifiable taste this floating power of smell. Say that it smells good, strong? But not ..... It's beyond .... An inner scent, scent of a better oneself. Here is shut up school autumn, with purple ink we scratch paper with down strokes and thin strokes. Rain bangs against glasses, evening will be long ....
But apple perfume is more than past. You think about formerly because of fullness and intensity from a remembrance of salpetered cellar, dark attic. But it's to live here, stay here, stand up.
You have behind you high herbs and damp orchards. Ahead it's like a warm blow given in the shade. Scent got all browns, all reds with a bit of green acid. Scent distilled skin softness, its tiny roughness. Lips dried, we alreadyt know that this thirst is not to be slaked.
Nothing would happen if you bite the white flesh. You would need to become october, mud floor, moss of cellar, rain, expectation.
Apple scent is painful. It's from a stronger life, a slowness ~ Philippe Delerm

I was never part of the sailing circle, but I enjoy when I'm invited to sail. ~ Philippe Petit

But with each passing year and each new study, the evidence for the genetic contribution to individual and group differences becomes more firmly established than ever. ~ J. Philippe Rushton

It isn't surprising if, as adults, when we first start to form relationships, we should devotedly go off in search of someone who can give us the all-encompassing, selfless love that we may once have known in childhood. Nor would it be surprising if we were to feel frustrated and in the end extremely bitter at how difficult it seems to be to find; at how seldom people understand what we need or care to help us properly. ~ Alain De Botton

...the news should help us with mourning the twisted nature of man and reconciling us to the difficulty of being able to imagine perfection while still not managing to secure it – for a range of stupid but nevertheless unbudgeable reasons...The news currently resists giving us the single most calming response one can offer to certain problems: evidence that they are normal and that they belong to a species which is intrinsically (rather than exceptionally) imperfect. ~ Alain De Botton

And everything stopped quite rapidly because I knew that nobody in Europe was able to go to space. It was the privilege of being either American or Russian. ~ Philippe Perrin

Nor is there any valid reason to reject the idea of God or the notion of the sacred just because of the sickly expression Christianity has given to them, any more than it is necessary to break with aristocratic principles on the pretext that they have been caricatured by the bourgeoisie. ~ Alain De Benoist

By travelling across frontiers, on horseback and in the imagination, Montaigne invited us to to exchange local prejudices and the self division they induced for less constraining identities as citizens of the world. ~ Alain De Botton

Marilyn was history's most phenomenal love goddess. ~ Philippe Halsman

Although it often struggles to be heard in respectable circles, there is an alternative to the Christian-Romantic tenet that sex and love should always be inseparable. The libertine position denies any inherent or logical link between loving someone and needing to be unfailingly sexually loyal to them. It proposes that it can be entirely natural and even healthy for partners in a couple occasionally to have sex with strangers for whom they have little feeling but to whom they nonetheless feel strongly attracted. Sex doesn't always have to be bound up with love. It can sometimes – this philosophy holds – be a purely physical, aerobic activity engaged in without substantive emotional meaning. It is, so its adherents conclude, just as absurd to suppose that one should only ever have sex with the person one loves as it would be to require that only those in committed couples ever be permitted to play table tennis or go jogging together. ~ Alain De Botton

There comes a moment when the silence between two people can have the purity of a diamond. ~ Philippe Djian

Rejection hurts so much because we take it as a damning judgement passed not merely on our physical appeal but on our entire selves, and by extension (at this stage we're crying into our pillow, as something by Bach or Leonard Cohen plays on the stereo) on our very right to exist. 2. ~ Alain De Botton