Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“While paying attention to the messages in its public spaces, Christianity also wisely recognizes the extent to which our concepts of good… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Though anger seems a pessimistic response to a situation, it is at root a symptom of hope: the hope that the world… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is actually the ultimate time-saver - because it gives us access to a range… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I'm one of those introverted people who simply feels a lot better after spending time alone thinking through ideas and emotions. This… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I always feel that I am writing for somebody who is bright but impatient. Someone who doesn't have unlimited time. That is… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The feeling one has no time to get anything done provides the pressure that guarantees one does get some things done.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Despite the liberal atmosphere of our time, it would be naive to assume that the distinction between “weird” and “normal” has disappeared.… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“He [Wordsworth] invited his readers to abandon their usual perspective and to consider for a time how the world might look through… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess. — 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
“What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent technological and sociological revolution against which… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I remember going to university, and the people who'd left home for the first time looked at the food and were horrified.… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The overreactor is responsible, as the psychological term puts it, for the 'transference' of an emotion from the past on to someone… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The word ‘snobbery’ came into use for the first time in England during the 1820s. It was said to have derived from… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“In the past, we got to know others because we had no option but to ask them for help – and were… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The secular are at this moment in history a great deal more optimistic than the religious – something of an irony, given… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas. — 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
There's something called religion, and it was invented a long time ago by people who felt very out of control with their… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The man who shouts every time he loses his house keys is betraying a beautiful but rash faith in a universe in… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
There are things that are not spoken about in polite society. Very quickly in most conversations you'll reach a moment where someone… — 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
