Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence; no painting ever captures the whole... — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We tend to think of philosophies as produced by professional philosophers. Traditionally, this has meant people who have written dissertations on obscure… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Bad art might be defined as a series of bad choices about what to show and what to leave out. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“A person cannot be at once a libertine and a married Romantic, however compelling both paradigms might be.” — 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
