I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Gaffe-focused journalism: revenge of intelligent people who know true evils are out there but lack the access/time to get to them. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Many moments in religion seem attractive to me even though I can't believe in any of it. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The man who shouts every time he loses his house keys is betraying a beautiful but rash faith in a universe in… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The study of maps and the perusal of travel books aroused in me a secret fascination that was at times almost irresistible. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The feeling one has no time to get anything done provides the pressure that guarantees one does get some things done.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“How mean to buy only as many books as one will actually have time to read.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
There's something called religion, and it was invented a long time ago by people who felt very out of control with their… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“He knows that perfect happiness comes in tiny, incremental units only, perhaps no more than five minutes at a time. This is… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I remember going to university, and the people who'd left home for the first time looked at the food and were horrified.… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I guess my overall life plan is to think about issues that concern me and try to use culture generally to make… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I always feel that I am writing for somebody who is bright but impatient. Someone who doesn't have unlimited time. That is… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up… — 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
“Our understanding of love has been hijacked and beguiled by its first distractingly moving moments. We have allowed our love stories to… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The word “snobbery” came into use for the first time in England during the 1820s. It was said to have derived from… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent technological and sociological revolution against which… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
There are things that are not spoken about in polite society. Very quickly in most conversations you'll reach a moment where someone… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I'm one of those introverted people who simply feels a lot better after spending time alone thinking through ideas and emotions. This… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“No one has ever learned anything under conditions of humiliation. The moment you said anything humiliating, the lesson is over. They are… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The word ‘snobbery’ came into use for the first time in England during the 1820s. It was said to have derived from… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“They've reached the point where, by rights, their story -- always slight -- should draw to a close. The Romantic challenge is… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“He [Wordsworth] invited his readers to abandon their usual perspective and to consider for a time how the world might look through… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Despite the liberal atmosphere of our time, it would be naive to assume that the distinction between “weird” and “normal” has disappeared.… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Though anger seems a pessimistic response to a situation, it is at root a symptom of hope: the hope that the world… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“While paying attention to the messages in its public spaces, Christianity also wisely recognizes the extent to which our concepts of good… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The overreactor is responsible, as the psychological term puts it, for the 'transference' of an emotion from the past on to someone… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will to doubt can… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“In the past, we got to know others because we had no option but to ask them for help – and were… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Most of the time, we have to be strong, we must not show our fragility. We’ve known that since the schoolyard. There… — Alain De Botton Copy Share Image
“The secular are at this moment in history a great deal more optimistic than the religious – something of an irony, given… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I was told by my father nine times a day that you were going to get a job the minute you finish… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful… — 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
“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)
![“He [Wordsworth] invited his readers to abandon their usual perspective and to consider for a time how the world might look through other eyes, to shuttle between the human and the natural perspective. Why might this be interesting, or even inspiring? Perhaps because unhappiness can stem from only…” quote by Alain de Botton](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/b54/alain-de-botton-221_books_he-wordsworth-invited-his-readers-to-aba_616994.jpg)
