Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them? — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
...if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We should read other people's books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, "Don't you worry about being called names?" retorted, "Why? Do you… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
If it is true that love is the pursuit in another of qualities we lack in ourselves, then in our love of… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming... If we spend time in it [the vast spaces… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed… — 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
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
William James once made an acute point about the relationship between happiness and expectation. He argued that satisfaction with ourselves does not… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
If the behaviour of babies and small children is any guide, we emerge into the world with our tendencies to imbalance already… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
If optimism is important, it's because many outcomes are determined by how much of it we bring to the task. It is… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We tend to believe in the modern secular world that if you tell someone something once, they'll remember it. ... Religions go,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The problem with clichés is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones...If...we… — 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
![“It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming... If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.” quote by Alain de Botton](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/b34/alain-de-botton-221_accepting_it-is-not-just-nature-that-defies-us-hum_2567295.jpg)
