“The notion of buildings that speak helps us to place at the very centre of our architectural conundrums the question of the… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“It follows that the balance we approve of in architecture, and which we anoint with the word 'beautiful', alludes to a state… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Analogising architecture with ethics helps us to discern that there is unlikely ever to be a single source of beauty in a… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Despite their claims to a purely scientific and reasoned approach, the relationship of Modernist architects to their work remained at base a… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
what we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistenly available to us the important truths which… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Insofar as we appreciate order, it is when we perceive it as being accompanied by complexity, when we feel that a variety… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the inferiors of the virgin land they have replaced. We… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design. It is an example expressed through materials… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Taking architecture seriously therefore makes some singular and strenuous demands upon us...It means conceding that we are inconveniently vulnerable to the colour… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“It follows that the balance we approve of in architecture, and which we anoint with the word 'beautiful', alludes to a state… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Beneath the pleasure generated by the juxtaposition of order and complexity, we can identify the subsidiary architectural virtue of balance. Beauty is… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“For us to deem a work of architecture elegant, it is hence not enough that it look simple: we must feel that… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Taking architecture seriously therefore makes some singular strenuous demands upon us. It requires that we open ourselves to the idea that we… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The architects who benefit us most maybe those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius in order to devote themselves… — 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 Image
“He feared that by leaving her he would ruin her life - so he stayed, and did just that.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
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 Image
“The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the constraints of reality.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
I like the values associated with a medical family - common sense, being practical but also thoughtful. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Anyone who urgently needs us deserves, in the true book of love, to be our friend.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
