My father paid for my education; then he made it clear that I was on my own. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I was a very un-literary child, which might reassure parents with kids who don't read. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I was told by my father nine times a day that you were going to get a job the minute you finish… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I'm basically the child of Richard… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Parent and child may both love, but - unbeknown to the child - each party is on a different end of the… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Parents don't reveal how often they have bitten their tongue, fought back the tears, or been too tired to take off their… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“And what excuse was there for this? Nothing but the old line that parents and politicians will use before taking out their… — 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
Parents become very good at not hearing the explicit words and listening instead to what the child means but doesn't yet know… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Then, in a further challenge to reality and because of the way she felt towards them, Chloe would (with the grin of… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“We start off in childhood believing parents might have access to a superior kind of knowledge and experience. They look, for a… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“What makes people good communicators is, in essence, an ability not to be fazed by the more problematic or offbeat aspects of… — 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
