When a restaurant is too popular, it starts to harm the reason you are there. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Some of the reason why we marry the wrong people is that we don't really understand ourselves. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
What should worry us is not the number of people that oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others - because it's a tool to help us live and die with… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
There are people who say, 'Oh this guy is quite thick.' I think the reason is that, increasingly, I don't mind being… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn't worry about death. If you have had a successful life,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I'm not an academic philosopher, and don't agree with the way the universities approach the subject. I'm a philosopher only in the… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We might have been ready to offer sympathy, but in actuality there were stronger reasons to want to congratulate her for having… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“We continue to need exhortations to be sympathetic and just, even if we do not believe that there is a God who… — 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
