Her lie was symptomatic of a certain pride she took in mocking the romantic, in being unsentimental, matter-of-fact, stoic; yet at heart… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“[T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister than our habit of looking at them… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day- to- day take on things. The bare facts of life… — 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
![“[T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister than our habit of looking at them in the wrong way, through lenses clouded by distraction, exhaustion and fear, which blind us to the fact that they are really, despite a thousand differences, just…” quote by Alain de Botton](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/c16/alain-de-botton-221_altered_t-he-unsympathetic-assessments-we-make-o_2167022.jpg)
