A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically teaches viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
In reality, the likelihood of reaching the pinnacle of capitalist society today is only marginally better than were the chances of being… — 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
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
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
“In Montaigne’s redrawn portrait of the adequate, semi-rational human being, it is possible to speak no Greek, fart, change one’s mind after… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Ordinary life rewards a practical, unintrospective outlook. There's too little time and too much fear for anything else. We let ourselves be… — 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
