“...a book provides for a distillation of our sporadic mind, a record of its most vital manifestations, a concentration of inspired moments… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“When Franklin D. Roosevelt was asked what book he could give the Soviets to teach them about the advantages of American society,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of… — 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
“Books should be full of stuff you could never say to people in public.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Reading Proust nearly silenced Virginia Woolf. She loved his novel, but loved it rather too much. There wasn’t enough wrong with it—a… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Importance of the random: keep brushing up against people, books, experiences we don't yet know what to do with.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“[Donald] Keene observed [in a book entitled The Pleasures of Japanese Literature, 1988] that the Japanese sense of beauty has long sharply… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the number of Books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone… — Alain De Botton Copy Share Image
“Ideally, art would give us the answers that other people don't. This might even be one of the main points of literature:… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“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… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“If we read the new masterpiece of a man of genius, we are delighted to find in it those reflections of ours… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own - but that we could never have described on our… — 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
One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me? — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I love novels where not much 'happens' but where the interest is in the ideas and analyses of characters. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The essential argument in the book, 'Art as Therapy,' is that art enjoys such financial and cultural prestige that it's easy to… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Academic masochism reflects a metaphysical prejudice that the truth should be a hard-won treasure, that what is read or learnt easily must… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Let's make sure our ideas of success are our own, that we are truly the authors of our own ambitions.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The idea of a book that can make a change to your life, that can affect your perspective, is a beautiful and… — 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
