Alain de Botton

Travel is a lot like love.

— Alain de Botton

I am always anxious.

— Alain de Botton

I am a very aesthetic person.

— Alain de Botton

“Beauty is a promise of happiness.”

— Alain de Botton

“Journeys are the midwives of thought.”

— Alain de Botton

Not everyone is worth listening to.

— Alain de Botton

“[W]e all incline in astonishingly personal ways to idiocy and spite”

— Alain de Botton

Compatibility is an achievement of love; it shouldn't be its precondition.

— Alain de Botton

“An urgent wish is no guarantor of a sound solution.”

— Alain de Botton

Must being in love always mean being in pain?

— Alain de Botton

If one felt successful, there'd be so little incentive to be successful.

— Alain de Botton

How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?

— Alain de Botton

Atheism is having a heyday in the born-again United States.

— Alain de Botton

My father paid for my education; then he made it clear that I was on my own.

— Alain de Botton

There's a certain kind of insular, old-fashioned, upper-class Britishness that gives me the spooks. I am sure that comes from a boarding-school…

— Alain de Botton

One of the most welcome aspects of office work is that you do not need to be fully yourself.

— Alain de Botton

“It would be insane to call Hamlet a loser, though he has lost and I think that is the lesson of tragedy.”

— Alain de Botton

Emotional life is - alongside work - one of the great challenges of existence and is a theme that I keep returning…

— Alain de Botton

“Not everything which happens to us occurs with reference to something about us.”

— Alain de Botton

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

Though debts are condemned in the financial world, the world of friendship and love may perversely depend on well-managed debts.

— Alain de Botton

One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us happy.

— Alain de Botton

The degree of sympathy we feel regarding another's fiasco is directly proportional to how easy or difficult it is for us to…

— Alain de Botton

“There is no necessary connection between the concepts of home and of prettiness; what we call a home is merely any place…

— Alain de Botton

When work is not going well, it's useful to remember that our identities stretch beyond what is on the business card, that…

— Alain de Botton

One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be…

— Alain de Botton

“Thus was born an astonishing new idea that governments justify their existence only by promoting possibilities for prosperity and happiness among all…

— Alain de Botton

“Watching crowds step off the escalators and onto the concourse, I thought it miraculous that in the midst of so many people,…

— Alain de Botton

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

We should read other people's books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing,…

— Alain de Botton

“Our innate imbalances are further aggravated by practical demands. Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing…

— Alain de Botton

“The very concept of trying to “teach” a lover things feels patronizing, incongruous, and plain sinister. If we truly loved someone, there…

— Alain de Botton

“We seem unwilling to allow for the possibility that the glory of our species may lie not only in the launch of…

— Alain de Botton

“What we encounter in works of art and philosophy are objective versions of our own pains and struggles, evoked and defined in…

— Alain de Botton

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

“It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks or sickens us that we should begin to be…

— Alain de Botton

“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

The assumption is that life doesn't need to be navigated with lessons. You can just do it intuitively. After all, you only…

— Alain de Botton

When a restaurant is too popular, it starts to harm the reason you are there.

— Alain de Botton

“There is no one more likely to destroy us than the person we marry.”

— Alain de Botton