Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Maturity/experience: the beguiling texture of stones subjected to years of furious seas.” — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough. — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
At 'The School of Life', we take seriously anything that has to do with human fulfilment - and take note wherever insight… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Crucial insights that we need to convey to ourselves can often be received only at night, like city church bells that have… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others - because it's a tool to help us live and die with… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
The philosophy I love is very selective. It is really just the bit that is involved in a search for wisdom, and… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Our best chance of contentment lies in taking up the wisdom offered to us in coded form through our coughs, allergies, social… — 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
“Setting people examination papers measuring wisdom rather than learning would probably result in an immediate realignment of the hierarchy of intelligence –… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“Insomnia can, when it goes on for weeks, be hell. But in smaller doses -- a night here and there -- it… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“gladly come back to the theme of the absurdity of our education: its end has not been to make us good and… — Alain de Botton Copy Share Image
“There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or even lived in a… — 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
