Let death find us as we are building up our matchstick protests against its waves. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Contemplating our mortality may give us the courage to unhook our lives from the more gratuitous of society's expectations” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The death of marriage has been announced so often and would seem so normal, in a sense. So what's surprising is the… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The forthrightness of the middle-aged seducer is rarely a matter of confidence or arrogance; it is instead a species of impatient despair… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Life gives us no such handy markers - a storm comes, and far from this being a harbinger of death and collapse,… — 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
In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn't worry about death. If you have had a successful life,… — 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
“Thunderstorms were what death, and dramatic events, generally should be like, but usually were not; the idea that our life’s dramas rarely… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Shortly after her older brother died, Chloe (who had just celebrated her eighth birthday) went through a deeply philosophical stage. "I began… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent technological and sociological revolution against which… — 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 signal danger of life in a godless society is that it lacks reminders of the transcendent and therefore leaves us unprepared… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“I think that life would suddenly seem wonderful to us if we were threatened to die as you say. Just think 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 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
