Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity--suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Though debts are condemned in the financial world, the world of friendship and love may perversely depend on well-managed debts. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened… — 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
Taking architecture seriously therefore makes some singular and strenuous demands upon us...It means conceding that we are inconveniently vulnerable to the colour… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It seemed an advantage to be traveling alone. Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home. — 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
...if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Happiness may be difficult to obtain. The obstacles are not primarily financial. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
If it is true that love is the pursuit in another of qualities we lack in ourselves, then in our love of… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they're… — 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
Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style. — 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
