The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The central task for a business is to make a profit. The challenge is to make a profit by doing things which… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Most business meetings involve one party elaborately suppressing a wish to shout at the other: 'just give us the money'.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
When work is not going well, it's useful to remember that our identities stretch beyond what is on the business card, that… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
There is real danger of a disconnect between what's on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it's not… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“We pick our friends not only because they are kind and enjoyable company, but also, perhaps more importantly, because they understand us… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The business of repatriating emotions emerges as one of the most delicate and necessary tasks of love. To accept the risks of… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The romantic person instinctively sees marriage in terms of emotions, but what a couple actually gets up to together over a lifetime… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The business card does not fully reflect who we are. We are being judged, we feel, in a humiliating way. We feel… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Partially undermining the manufacturer's ability to assert that its work constituted a meaningful contribution to mankind was the frivolous way in which… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The travails of being an employee include not only uncertainty about the duration of one's employment, but also the humiliation of many… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
That said, deciding to avoid other people does not necessarily equate with having no desire whatsoever for company; it may simply reflect… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“In February 62, Seneca came up against an unalterable reality. Nero ceased to listen to his old tutor, he shunned his company,… — 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 been able to solve with any particular skill: first, the need to live together in communities in harmony, despite our deeply rooted selfish and violent impulses. And second, the need to cope with terrifying degrees of… — 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 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
