If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I do think that travel can be part of a journey of inner maturation, but you've got to do it right. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Whatever the benefits of prolific and convenient air travel, we may curse it for its smooth subversion of our attempts to use… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“We are inundated with advice on where to travel to, but we hear little of why and how we should go, even… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
One wants never to give up this crystalline perspective. One wants to keep counterpositioning home with what one knows of alternative realities,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The origins and travels of our purchases remain matters of indifference, although to the more imaginative at least a slight dampness at… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Even if our loved ones have assured us that they will be busy at work, even if they told us they hated… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“It seemed an advantage to be traveling alone. Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by whom we are with, we… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“At the top of the slope on the perimeter of the site, overlooking six lanes of motorway, is a diner frequented by… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“The longing provoked by the brochure was an example , at once touching and pathetic, of how projects (and even whole lives)… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains. There is… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Why be seduced by something as small as a front door in another country? Why fall in love with a place because… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“We are humiliated by what is powerful and mean, but awed by what is powerful and noble.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The study of maps and the perusal of travel books aroused in me a secret fascination that was at times almost irresistible. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“A danger of travel is that we may see things at the wrong time, before we have had an opportunity to build… — 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
