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
Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“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
What I do know from my life is the phenomenon of saying, 'This is too small a thing to argue about', but… — 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
“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
There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“To appreciate life's small moments, it helps to have a sense the whole can never be made perfect.” — 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
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
“For the Romantic, it is only the briefest of steps from a glimpse of a stranger to the formulation of a majestic… — 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
“Maturity' really means: being very unsurprised by, and calm around, pain and disappointment.” — 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
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
I guess my overall life plan is to think about issues that concern me and try to use culture generally to make… — 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
“Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first—the story of our quest for sexual… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“...workplace dynamics are no less complicated or unexpectedly intense than family relations, with only the added difficulty that whereas families are at… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Saint Augustine consolingly codified unhappiness as an immutable feature of existence, part of "the wretchedness of man's situation," and poured scorn on… — 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
You will often be in despair. You will sometimes think it's the worst decision in your life. That's fine. That's not a… — 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
“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
