I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I love the idea of a university as away from capitalist values, where people can do things that don't immediately have to… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Le Corbusier is an outstanding writer. His ideas achieved their impact in large measure because he could write so convincingly. His style… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It seems the only way to write a half decent book is to worry oneself sick on an hourly basis that one… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
If cynicism and love lie at opposite ends of a spectrum, do we not sometimes fall in love in order to escape… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Objectively good spaces to work rarely end up being so; in their faultlessness, quiet and well-equipped studios have a habit of rendering… — 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
Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we… — 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
Religions are so subtle, so complicated, so intelligent in many ways that they're not fit to be abandoned to the religious alone;… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We need objects to remind us of the commitments we've made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The problem with airports is that we go there when we need to catch a plane - and because it's so difficult… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things — 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
In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Becoming a writer wasn't a choice (there would have been far more worthwhile things to do); it was the best, most fruitful… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“[T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister than our habit of looking at them… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
.. if you asked most people whether they believed in love or not, they’d probably say they didn’t. Yet that’s not necessarily… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
We may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they're… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the status hierarchy; they have attemptee, rather, to… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Let's say you went to Harvard or Oxford or Cambridge, and you said, 'I've come here because I'm in search of morality,… — 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
