“There is a danger of developing a blanket distaste for modern life which could have its attractions but lack the all-important images… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Emotional life is - alongside work - one of the great challenges of existence and is a theme that I keep returning… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Thus was born an astonishing new idea that governments justify their existence only by promoting possibilities for prosperity and happiness among all… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“To make it into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming... If we spend time in it [the vast spaces… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day- to- day take on things. The bare facts of life… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The more closely we analyze what we consider 'sexy,' the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
You will often be in despair. You will sometimes think it's the worst decision in your life. That's fine. That's not a… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“We seem to be unable to resist overstating every aspect of ourselves: how long we are on the planet for, how much… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“We chase after more exciting others, not in the belief that life with them will be more harmonious, but out of an… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Year-end financial statements express a truth about office life which is no less irrefutable yet also, in the end, no less irrelevant… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“We continue to need exhortations to be sympathetic and just, even if we do not believe that there is a God who… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“There are books that speak to us of our own lives with a clarity we cannot match. They prevent the morose suspicion… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the status hierarchy; they have attemptee, rather, to… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
People who hold important positions in society are commonly labelled "somebodies," and their inverse "nobodies"-both of which are, of course, nonsensical descriptors,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Ordinary life rewards a practical, unintrospective outlook. There's too little time and too much fear for anything else. We let ourselves be… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The most significant fact of political life, which almost no news organization will dare to acknowledge – because it would at a… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another--which is not to say… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Maturity means acknowledging that Romantic love might only constitute a narrow and perhaps rather mean-minded aspect of emotional life, one principally focused… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
At 'The School of Life', we take seriously anything that has to do with human fulfilment - and take note wherever insight… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“How we feel about 'the nature of existence' is largely determined by what we have to do in the next few hours.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We are properly ready for marriage when we are strong enough to embrace a life of frustration. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Being put in our place by something larger, older, greater than ourselves is not a humiliation; it should be accepted as a… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“To appreciate life's small moments, it helps to have a sense the whole can never be made perfect.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Art can do the opposite of glamourise the unattainable: it can show us anew the genuine merit of life as we're forced… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“A feeling of beauty is a sign that we have come upon a material articulation of certain of our ideas of a… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis of morality, or a… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Thunderstorms were what death, and dramatic events, generally should be like, but usually were not; the idea that our life’s dramas rarely… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Life gives us no such handy markers - a storm comes, and far from this being a harbinger of death and collapse,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically teaches viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first—the story of our quest for sexual… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Saint Augustine consolingly codified unhappiness as an immutable feature of existence, part of "the wretchedness of man's situation," and poured scorn on… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“To be mature is, we're told, to move beyond possessiveness. Jealousy is for babies. The mature person knows that no one owns anyone.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share
“He feared that by leaving her he would ruin her life - so he stayed, and did just that.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share
You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them. — Alain de Botton Copy Share
“The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the constraints of reality.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share
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 Copy Share
“We could not be fulfilled if we weren't inauthentic some of the time—inauthentic, that is, in relation to such things as our passing desires… — Alain de Botton Copy Share
“Insofar as we appreciate order, it is when we perceive it as being accompanied by complexity, when we feel that a variety of elements… — Alain de Botton Copy Share
I like the values associated with a medical family - common sense, being practical but also thoughtful. — Alain de Botton Copy Share
“Anyone who urgently needs us deserves, in the true book of love, to be our friend.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share
“We can then recognize that we invented religions to serve two central needs which continue to this day and which secular society has not… — Alain de Botton Copy Share
“Half the ingratitude and complacency in the world down to how slowly and imperceptibly most good and bad things unfold.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share
It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things. — Alain de Botton Copy Share
“Does what is praised becomes better? Does an emerald become worse if it isn't praised? And what a gold, ivory, a flower or a… — Alain de Botton Copy Share
The bourgeois thinkers of the eighteenth century thus turned Aristotle's formula on its head: satisfactions which the Greek philosopher had identified with leisure were… — Alain de Botton Copy Share
Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves. — Alain de Botton Copy Share
![“It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming... If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.” quote by Alain de Botton](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/b34/alain-de-botton-221_accepting_it-is-not-just-nature-that-defies-us-hum_2567295.jpg)
