“He feared that by leaving her he would ruin her life - so he stayed, and did just that.” — 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
“The accusations we make of our lovers make no particular sense. We would utter such unfair things to no one else on… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“To have a sexual history did not only imply one had made love to a succession of people, it also suggested one… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“By conceiving of love as biologically inevitable, key to the continuation of the species, Schopenhauer's theory of the will invites us to… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Pain is surprising; we cannot understand why we have been abandoned in love... why we are unable to sleep at night.... Identifying… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks or sickens us that we should begin to be… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I love the idea of a university as away from capitalist values, where people can do things that don't immediately have to… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“He will surmise that love can endure only when one is unfaithful to its beguiling opening ambitions, and that, for his relationships… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The terms avoidant and anxious are hardly typical in a love story, but if Romantic is taken to mean “helpful to the… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The philosophy I love is very selective. It is really just the bit that is involved in a search for wisdom, and… — 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
“It seems as if, in making a marriage, either the individual or the interest of the species must come off badly.” — 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
“We take this idea of love (being loved, rather than loving) with us into adulthood. Grown up, we hope for a re-creation… — 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
In the early days of love sometimes, you will report an ecstatic feeling you have met someone who seems to understand you… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Maturity means acknowledging that Romantic love might only constitute a narrow and perhaps rather mean-minded aspect of emotional life, one principally focused… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Children teach us that love is, in its purest form, a kind of service. The word has grown freighted with negative connotations.… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Sex will never be simple or nice in the ways we might like it to be,It is not fundamentally democratic or kind;… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“We should add: it is a privilege to be the recipient of a sulk; it means the other person respects and trusts… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love… — 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
