The real issue is not whether baking biscuits is meaningful, but the extent to which the activity can seem to be so… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Advertising is - quite often - alive to our real needs. It's just the products on offer might not be the things… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
There is real danger of a disconnect between what's on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it's not… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Among adults, we can admit that of course, characters are creations. They aren't real people. — 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
Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my… — 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
