“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
“Marriage: a deeply peculiar and ultimately unkind thing to inflict on anyone one claims to care for.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Choosing a spouse and a choosing career: the two great decisions for which society refuses to set up institutional guidance. — 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
To a shameful extent, the charm of marriage boils down to how unpleasant it is to be alone. — 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
“A person cannot be at once a libertine and a married Romantic, however compelling both paradigms might be.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage - which… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The death of marriage has been announced so often and would seem so normal, in a sense. So what's surprising is the… — 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… — 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
“A marriage doesn't begin with a proposal, or even an initial meeting. It begins far earlier, when the idea of love is… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The romantic person instinctively sees marriage in terms of emotions, but what a couple actually gets up to together over a lifetime… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The pursuit of personal happiness and the production of healthy children are two radically contrasting projects, which love maliciously confuses us into… — 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
“The benefits of a philosophy of neo-religious pessimism are nowhere more apparent than in relation to marriage, one of modern society’s most… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“In an ideal world, marriage vows would be entirely rewritten. At the altar, a couple would speak thus: “We accept not to… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Some of the reason why we marry the wrong people is that we don't really understand ourselves. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We are properly ready for marriage when we are strong enough to embrace a life of frustration. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“A spouse who gets angry at having been betrayed is evading a basic, tragic truth: that no one can be everything to… — 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
