I was uncomfortable writing fiction. My love was the personal essay, rather than the novel. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“When two people part, it is the one who is not in love who makes the tender speeches.” — 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
“For many, the point of marriage isn't so much to be in love as to stop having to think of love.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I keep a picture of my beloved children close by. Also, water and plenty of pads and pens. — 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
Often we think love is a feeling: that you spontaneously experience it. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Our ‘ego’ or self-conception could be pictured as a leaking balloon, forever requiring the helium of external love to remain inflated and… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I love novels where not much 'happens' but where the interest is in the ideas and analyses of characters. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Repression, a degree of restraint, and a little dedication to self-editing belong to love just as surely as a capacity for explicit… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Love could not induce us to take on the burden of propagating the species without promising us the greatest happiness we could… — 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
It's hard loving those who don't much like themselves: "If you're so great, why would you think I'm so great. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
...if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Everyone endeavours to eliminate through the other individual his own weaknesses, defects, and deviations from the type, lest they be perpetuated or… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Unrequited love may be painful, but it is safely painful, because it does not involve inflicting damage on anyone but oneself, a… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We don't sulk with everybody. We limit our sulks to a very particular person: the person who's supposed to love us and… — 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
“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
The thing is that love gives us a ringside seat on somebody else's flaws, so of course you're gonna spot some things… — 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
“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
To be loved by someone is to realize how much they share the same needs that lie at the heart of our… — 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
“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
“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
“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
“While a common reaction to seeing a thing of beauty is to want to buy it, our real desire may be not… — 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
The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Although I don't believe in God, Bach's music shows me what a love of God must feel like. — 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
“A person cannot be at once a libertine and a married Romantic, however compelling both paradigms might be.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Used to do a lot of falling in love with people, almost in the street, and imagining that there would be no… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“a lack of love: between a man and a woman is the announcement that what they might produce would only be a… — 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
“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
“He feared that by leaving her he would ruin her life - so he stayed, and did just that.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share
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
“The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the constraints of reality.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share
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
“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
“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
I like the values associated with a medical family - common sense, being practical but also thoughtful. — Alain de Botton Copy Share
“Anyone who urgently needs us deserves, in the true book of love, to be our friend.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share
“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
“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
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
“Does what is praised becomes better? Does an emerald become worse if it isn't praised? And what a gold, ivory, a flower or a… — Alain de Botton Copy Share
The bourgeois thinkers of the eighteenth century thus turned Aristotle's formula on its head: satisfactions which the Greek philosopher had identified with leisure were… — Alain de Botton Copy Share
Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves. — Alain de Botton Copy Share
