“We chase after more exciting others, not in the belief that life with them will be more harmonious, but out of an… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Lovers cannot remain philosophers for long, they should give way to the religious impulse, which is to believe and have faith, as… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“In a world beset by fundamentalists of both believing and secular varieties, it must be possible to balance a rejection of religious… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“While mourning the number of missed opportunities, we have no reason to abandon a belief in the ever-present possibility of moulding circumstances… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It is no coincidence that the Western attraction to sublime landscapes developed at precisely the moment when traditional beliefs in God began… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“However powerful our technology and complex our corporations, the most remarkable feature of the modern working world may in the end 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
