Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The modern world thinks of art as very important: something close to the meaning of life. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“I think the genius of religions is that they structure the inner life.” — 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
The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Just be yourself' is about the worst advice you can give some people.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answer a median need for dignity… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Beauty, then, is a fragment of the divine, and the sight of it saddens us by evoking our sense of loss and… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
What annoys me about most self-help books is that they have no tragic sense. They have no sense that life is fundamentally… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Public life is debased because it's only the nice people who are worried about imposing their views on others.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
At 'The School of Life', we take seriously anything that has to do with human fulfilment - and take note wherever insight… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Thus was born an astonishing new idea that governments justify their existence only by promoting possibilities for prosperity and happiness among all… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“peculiar, or sad, and yet still deserve a place within the circle of familial love. The parents would thus have created an… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to have a successful life.… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The moral? That life can be a stranger substance than a cliche life, that goldfinches should occasionally do things differently from their… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The number one person who needs my books is me. I'm not some sort of disinterested guru who has worked life out… — 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 make it into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first - the story of our quest… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“We place such demands on our partners, and become so unreasonable around them, because we have faith that someone who understands obscure… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“We allow for complexity, and therefore make accommodations for disagreement and its patient resolution, in most of the big areas of life:… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“He is a collection of tissues and cells delicately and intricately conjoined and brought to life for only an instant. It will… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The assumption is that life doesn't need to be navigated with lessons. You can just do it intuitively. After all, you only… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The signal danger of life in a godless society is that it lacks reminders of the transcendent and therefore leaves us unprepared… — 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
“history tells us of the case of a man living under the peculiar delusion that he was a fried egg. Quite how… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Heartache may be bad for the soul, but it's great for bookshops. It's when we are at our lowest romantic ebb that… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“I strip myself emotionally when I confess need – that I would be lost without you, that I am not necessarily the… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“creature on earth seemed to Schopenhauer to be equally committed to an equally meaningless existence: Contemplate the restless industry of wretched little… — 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
Emotional life is - alongside work - one of the great challenges of existence and is a theme that I keep returning… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days. — 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
![“[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of failing to understand ourselves and misinterpreting the behaviour of others, of growing unproductively anxious or desirous, and of losing ourselves to vanity and error…” quote by Alain de Botton](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/a9c/alain-de-botton-221_anxiety_l-ife-is-a-phenomenon-in-need-of-critici_1775630.jpg)
