“I will despise whatever lies in the domain of Fortune, but if a choice is offered, I will choose the better half.” — 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
“In democracies, by contrast, the propaganda of the press and public opinion relentlessly promised servants that they, too, could reach the pinnacles… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
I thought about societies where exceptional fortunes are built up in industries with very little connection to out sincere and significant needs,… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpredictable soil of medieval Europe, modern populations have… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“What a peculiar civilisation this was: inordinately rich, yet inclined to accrue its wealth through the sale of some astonishingly small and… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Uniting the many challenges to the commercial meritocratic ideal is a threefold plea, that we cease investing with moral connotations something as… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
It is this idea 'decency' should be attached to wealth -and 'indecency'' to poverty - that forms the core of one strand… — 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
