The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
There is always the option of being emotionally lazy, that is, of quoting. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Work is most fulfilling when you're at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The more dignity is widely and freely available in a society, the less people want to be famous. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Loneliness makes us more capable of true intimacy if ever better opportunities do come along. We might be isolated for now, but… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“A fundamental truth, is that there is simply no such thing as an inherently boring person or thing. People are only in… — 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
Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself. — 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
