Children Quotes by Alain de Botton

21 Children quotes by Alain de Botton

All Children quotes Alain de Botton’s page

De Botton’s philosophical bent offers a reflective take on raising kids, balancing practical wisdom with deeper musings on happiness. In 21 concise thoughts he invites readers to consider the larger meaning behind everyday parenting.

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“It is surely significant that the adults who feature in children's books are rarely, if ever, Regional Sales Managers or Building Services…

Alain de Botton

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The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.

Alain de Botton

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I keep a picture of my beloved children close by. Also, water and plenty of pads and pens.

Alain de Botton

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I tell my children what I think myself: That religion is not necessarily convincing, but it is still interesting and not to…

Alain de Botton

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When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard…

Alain de Botton

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I was a very un-literary child, which might reassure parents with kids who don't read.

Alain de Botton

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Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.

Alain de Botton

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Parent and child may both love, but - unbeknown to the child - each party is on a different end of the…

Alain de Botton

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Parents become very good at not hearing the explicit words and listening instead to what the child means but doesn't yet know…

Alain de Botton

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“We could not be fulfilled if we weren't inauthentic some of the time—inauthentic, that is, in relation to such things as our…

Alain de Botton

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Where is instruction in relationships, in the management of career, in the raising of children, in the pursuit of friendship, in the…

Alain de Botton

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“Everyone endeavours to eliminate through the other individual his own weaknesses, defects, and deviations from the type, lest they be perpetuated or…

Alain de Botton

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“Children may end up being the unexpected teachers of people many times their age, to whom they offer—through their exhaustive dependence, egoism,…

Alain de Botton

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“We do our sulking lovers the greatest possible favor when we are able to regard their tantrums as we would those of…

Alain de Botton

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If the behaviour of babies and small children is any guide, we emerge into the world with our tendencies to imbalance already…

Alain de Botton

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“Then, in a further challenge to reality and because of the way she felt towards them, Chloe would (with the grin of…

Alain de Botton

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The assumption is that life doesn't need to be navigated with lessons. You can just do it intuitively. After all, you only…

Alain de Botton

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“We place such demands on our partners, and become so unreasonable around them, because we have faith that someone who understands obscure…

Alain de Botton

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“What makes people good communicators is, in essence, an ability not to be fazed by the more problematic or offbeat aspects of…

Alain de Botton

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“We start off in childhood believing parents might have access to a superior kind of knowledge and experience. They look, for a…

Alain de Botton

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“Children teach us that love is, in its purest form, a kind of service. The word has grown freighted with negative connotations.…

Alain de Botton

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More by Alain de Botton

“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

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“He feared that by leaving her he would ruin her life - so he stayed, and did just that.”

Alain de Botton

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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

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“The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the constraints of reality.”

Alain de Botton

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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

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“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

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“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

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I like the values associated with a medical family - common sense, being practical but also thoughtful.

Alain de Botton

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“Anyone who urgently needs us deserves, in the true book of love, to be our friend.”

Alain de Botton

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“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

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“Half the ingratitude and complacency in the world down to how slowly and imperceptibly most good and bad things unfold.”

Alain de Botton

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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

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“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

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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

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Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.

Alain de Botton

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