We don't really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should… — 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
The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at an English… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The problem with clichés is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones...If...we… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The problem isn't so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
A simple problem of arithmetic: there are far more ambitions than there are grand destinies available. — 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
