After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We should read other people's books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I've had my successes and failures. I know many academics in my field loathe me. I've come to loathe them back, as… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy: they are our covert guides to what we should try to… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence; no painting ever captures the whole... — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as beautiful, intelligent, and witty as we are ugly,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another--which is not to say… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Symons remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him was the idea that they ought… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
According to one influential wing of modern secular society there are few more disreputable fates than to end up being 'like everyone… — 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
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
What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It should not be Illiers-Combray that we visit: a genuine homage to Proust would be to look at our world through his… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to have a successful life.… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We accept the need to train extensively to fly a plane; but think instinct should be enough for marrying and raising kids. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The architects who benefit us most maybe those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius in order to devote themselves… — 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
Being funny should be an incidental byproduct of trying to get to something truthful, not a destination in itself. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Differ though we might with Christianity's view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me? — 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
