# Quote — Alain de Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy

> Though the terrain of frustration may be vast — from a stubbed toe to an untimely death — at the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.

- Author: [Alain de Botton](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton.md)
- Book: [The Consolations of Philosophy](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-consolations-of-philosophy.md)
- Page: 80
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alain_de_Botton#The_Consolations_of_Philosophy_(2000)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-consolations-of-philosophy/though-the-terrain

## More from this book

> 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.

p. 146 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-consolations-of-philosophy/by-travelling-across.md)

> To cut out every negative root would simultaneously mean choking off positive elements that might arise from it further up the stem of the plant.
>
> We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

p. 228 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-consolations-of-philosophy/to-cut-out.md)

> In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.

p. 199 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-consolations-of-philosophy/in-their-different.md)