We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like; we envy only members of our reference group. There are few… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy: they are our covert guides to what we should try to… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers... Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“It follows that the more people we take to be our equals and compare ourselves to, the more people there will be… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this is just in… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
No one is able to produce a great work of art without experience, nor achieve a worldly position immediately, nor be a… — 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
