“Ordinary life rewards a practical, unintrospective outlook. There's too little time and too much fear for anything else. We let ourselves be… — 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
“Being put in our place by something larger, older, greater than ourselves is not a humiliation; it should be accepted as a… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“We should give chaos pride of place once a year or so, designating occasions on which we can be briefly exempted from… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason. — 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
Differ though we might with Christianity's view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Life gives us no such handy markers - a storm comes, and far from this being a harbinger of death and collapse,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the status hierarchy; they have attemptee, rather, to… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“It is hope--with regard to our careers, our love lives, our children, our politicians, and our planet--that is primarily to blame for… — 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
“We continue to need exhortations to be sympathetic and just, even if we do not believe that there is a God who… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
People who hold important positions in society are commonly labelled "somebodies," and their inverse "nobodies"-both of which are, of course, nonsensical descriptors,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“We seem to be unable to resist overstating every aspect of ourselves: how long we are on the planet for, how much… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Fantasies can be great, but we shouldn't make the wedding a fantasy, because the wedding is the gateway to married life. It… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The idea of a book that can make a change to your life, that can affect your perspective, is a beautiful and… — 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
