Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I was a very un-literary child, which might reassure parents with kids who don't read. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
I keep a picture of my beloved children close by. Also, water and plenty of pads and pens. — 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
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 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… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Parent and child may both love, but - unbeknown to the child - each party is on a different end of the… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 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
