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
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
You need a long hard day's work to reveal the logic of the craving for very bad tv and alcohol. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We need objects to remind us of the commitments we've made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more… — 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
We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability.… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answer a median need for dignity… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We accept the need to train extensively to fly a plane; but think instinct should be enough for marrying and raising kids. — 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
“[T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister than our habit of looking at them… — 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
I thought about societies where exceptional fortunes are built up in industries with very little connection to out sincere and significant needs,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The assumption is that life doesn't need to be navigated with lessons. You can just do it intuitively. After all, you only… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We tend to believe in the modern secular world that if you tell someone something once, they'll remember it. ... Religions go,… — 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
People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too. — 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
![“[T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister than our habit of looking at them in the wrong way, through lenses clouded by distraction, exhaustion and fear, which blind us to the fact that they are really, despite a thousand differences, just…” quote by Alain de Botton](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/c16/alain-de-botton-221_altered_t-he-unsympathetic-assessments-we-make-o_2167022.jpg)
