I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“When two people part, it is the one who is not in love who makes the tender speeches.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It wasn't only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It would scarcely be acceptable, for example, to ask in the course of an ordinary conversation what our society holds to be… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“A fundamental truth, is that there is simply no such thing as an inherently boring person or thing. People are only in… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Whatever modern democracies may tell themselves about their commitment to free speech and to diversity of opinion, the values of a given… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We feel something, and reach out for the nearest phrase or hum with which to communicate, but which fails to do justice… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains. There is… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There… — 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
“Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There… — 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
