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I was a very un-literary child, which might reassure parents with kids who don't read.


Alain de Botton

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It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Most children - I know I did when I was a kid - fantasize another set of parents. Or fantasize no pa...
MAURICE SENDAK We are humiliated by what is powerful and mean, but awed by what is powerful and noble.
ALAIN DE BOTTON I might have simply settled down into an armchair literary life. I really don't know exactly why...
EDWARD CARPENTER It's like the old thing: The parents stay together for the kids, but the kids know that you don&...
JAIME PRESSLY I was on significant financial aid, an only child, with parents who didn't have much living in N...
CHRIS HUGHES I would argue that education, actual learning - it is hard work. It's very personal. Your parent...
DEAN KAMEN Comedy doesn't really matter that much; I know that. I treat it like an adult - I don't trea...
BO BURNHAM Don't get me wrong, I love literary fiction. It's faux literary fiction I can't stand.
DENNIS LEHANE My advice is this. For Christ's sake, don't write a book that is suitable for a kid of 12 ye...
TERRY PRATCHETT I don't know which way I'm going. My next CD might be country, might be Dylan, might be Mick...
MAVIS STAPLES I don't believe in nepotism. I don't much like the idea of parents who interfere.
ANTHONY HOPKINS I have loved to cook since I was a child in my mother's kitchen. If I don't have time to coo...
KAMALA HARRIS My parents both had Oxford degrees, they read important books, spoke foreign languages, drank real c...
ARABELLA WEIR I was a sickly child, not very strong physically. I wasn't really the greatest in school. I didn...
PATTI SMITH 'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.
MARK TWAIN I believe in superstitions. You don't talk about a child who hasn't been born.
ELIE WIESEL I don't have many friends; I'm very much a loner. As a child I was very isolated, and I'...
ANTHONY HOPKINS A lot of older parents worry about being older parents. I hear people say, 'I don't want to ...
PENN JILLETTE Not that we didn't have close relationships with our parents - I'm very close to my mom - bu...
CANDICE BERGEN I don't read other science fiction. I don't read any at all.
JACK VANCE I was a bit of a delinquent growing up, a very poor student - I nearly failed several grades before ...
PHILIPP MEYER Like most parents, I want everything for my kids that I didn't have. But I don't intend to s...
CURTIS JOSEPH If I don't work very often, it's because what I read is written for formidable actresses, bu...
ISABELLE ADJANI I hang out all the time with kids and young scouts and I never meet kids who don't want adventur...
BEAR GRYLLS I don't remember how I picked up 'Different Seasons,' but it was a book I read on a grav...
KHALED HOSSEINI I did a lot of acting when I was a child. I was very shy - the kind of kid who ran into a corner and...
ADRIENNE SHELLY I know black kids who don't even know any other black kids except their cousins. And that's ...
DARRYL PINCKNEY I very rarely read a script that I don't feel I want to change a lot.
DAVID MACKENZIE I don't remember being taught to read, and by the time I was seven years old, I had read a very ...
WILLIAM MORRIS I actually don't read comic books. I did when I was a kid - I used to read a lot of 'X-Men&#...
CHARLYNE YI I was one of those kids who tended to stay in on Saturday nights. My mother used to come and say, &#...
RIDLEY SCOTT I don't mean to be presumptuous that men don't feel this, I don't mean this, but I found...
TEA LEONI - I tak nieźle sobie pożyłem.
- Co to za życie? – powiedział ojciec.- Nic tylko kłamstw...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI I certainly don't want a child of mine to be famous, or anyone I was very close to who isn't...
ELIZABETH HURLEY As a child, I was a brat, and my parents didn't know how to control me. So they told me ghost st...
BIPASHA BASU Un miros de sărac, un miros de violență, de necesitatea de a parveni.
JEAN-MARIE G. LE CLéZIO I don't read thrillers, romance or mystery, and I don't read self-help books because I don&#...
ISABEL ALLENDE I don't read books by people who have betrayed the Motherland.
VLADIMIR PUTIN I don't read much when I'm working. When I'm finished work, I don't want a thing to ...
PAULINE GEDGE I was raised with hippie parents, so I get down with the positive. I don't pay attention to the ...
GUY FIERI Every utopia - let's just stick with the literary ones - faces the same problem: What do you do ...
MARGARET ATWOOD Dakota Fanning is a child, but she is a wonderful actor. I don't know what a child actor is. She...
DENZEL WASHINGTON When I was growing up, I don't think I knew any other child who had been out of Sri Lanka.
ROMESH GUNESEKERA I don't really read 'business books,' and I didn't think 'The Paradox of Choice&...
BARRY SCHWARTZ Kids are no fools: they're very sophisticated, they don't miss a lot; they don't miss nu...
BERTIE CARVEL I love reviews. Anybody who tells you they don't read reviews is a liar.
ELAINE STRITCH My real self, the self I have always been from a child, is a loner and nerd, slightly overweight, wi...
HAYLEY ATWELL If parents don't instruct their kids on the narrow boundaries of respectful behavior toward the ...
JANE VELEZ-MITCHELL It was a lot of fun being a child actress. It suited me. I don't think it suits everybody, but I...
ALANNA UBACH The thing is: I was quite slow when I was younger. I might have been smart - I don't know - but ...
BENJAMIN CLEMENTINE No child should be raised in a system. A system isn't a parent. Even the system knows this, whic...
RHEA PERLMAN I'd hope to reach any kid who feels apart from the group - those who seem to be outsiders, who f...
ELLEN MUTH When I read it, I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.
NORMAN MAILER I don't read reviews. I find them very distracting, whether they're good or bad.
EVE BEST People don't understand that I have a great relationship with my parents - like, how that can ex...
KATY PERRY I must be honest here; I don't think there's such a thing as 'unconventional' when i...
RAE CARSON Because I was an only child, I don't like many people around, and that's why I don't hav...
CHARLES NELSON REILLY I was the oldest of seven kids, so I had no older brother who would say, 'Schmuck, don't do ...
PETE HAMILL I was a loner as a child and happiest at home, launching toy rockets and aeroplanes. When I started ...
GARY NUMAN No one in my family was a reader of literary fiction. So, I didn't have encouragement, but I did...
AMY TAN I haven't got purity, and I don't think I ever did. I have always been, even as a child, a v...
MARIANNE FAITHFULL My parents took me to see plays, starting from when I was very little. Oftentimes, I was too young t...
AARON SORKIN My favorite book is anything by Kurt Vonnegut - he's my literary hero. I got to meet him several...
STEVEN WRIGHT I think of myself as an Olympian. I have had a dream since I was a very small child. And because I h...
DANIELLE DE NIESE I don't read the press, I don't watch endless music TV.
ED O'BRIEN I don't read books.
ERIC BRISTOW When I was 17 or 18 I wanted to become a wine expert, and my parents wouldn't let me drink. So I...
GARY VAYNERCHUK I didn't read children's books when I was a child. The only books in our house were ration b...
MICHAEL FOREMAN I would have to say honestly I was very pleased to be in a film whether it was good or bad with De N...
ANGELA BASSETT When I put together a graphic novel, I don't think about literary prose. I think about storytell...
TED RALL I can't change overnight into a serious literary author. You can't compare apples to oranges...
JOHN GRISHAM I don't read anything anymore. I don't have the eyesight. I read my own copy, that's all...
JOHN GOULD Whatever our bedtime was as kids, we could stay up an extra half hour if we were reading. My parents...
NATHAN FILLION I don't have a directorial overview, which sometimes is very helpful.
JULIA BARR Singing was something I always did. I really don't remember a time when I wasn't singing, ev...
ALESSIA CARA I have never had a social life, don't ever want one because it's boring. I'm just not ve...
DANIEL JOHNS I read fashion magazines all the time. It's fun, but I don't take it very seriously.
BECKI NEWTON Nowadays, kids are not like when I was growing up. That is why it's important for parents to get inv...
CLARENCE MOORE My dad was a terrible father. Dreadful. But he had a very difficult childhood. He was fostered - he ...
MARK BILLINGHAM A lot of the stories I've read about myself, I don't even recognize who they're writing ...
SACHEEN LITTLEFEATHER I hadn't learned to read by third grade, which wasn't unusual for some kids. I knew somethin...
BARBARA CORCORAN I don't read the critics.
OLIVIER DAHAN My parents never told me I was beautiful, and for one very good reason. I wasn't. When your chil...
LAURIE GRAHAM I'll never forget a meeting with one publisher where they said, 'We don't publish books ...
DARREN SHAN I have an assistant who's very good at email, so I don't struggle with it.
QUENTIN BLAKE I was very obsessed with my music, and I think that, as a young girl, I really wanted to get into th...
BEBE REXHA Literary men now routinely tell their readers about their divorces. One literary man who reviews boo...
GEORGE W. S. TROW I think a lot of parents who are smart, well-read - they're the ones who are choosing not to vac...
SEAN DUFFY Remember before nineteen seventy two Olympic Games I was total skinny, I was small, very strong, the...
OLGA KORBUT All summer, I read fiction because you must read for the pleasure and beauty of it, and not only for...
ISABEL ALLENDE With three kids, it was always very, very tight, and it was always a scramble for what was my next j...
WILLIAM SHATNER I was very much an only child who was raised by the television and movies, and I grew up in New York...
BILLY EICHNER I don't like to read things that people write about me. I'd rather read what kids have to sa...
DAVID BOWIE I did swimming, gymnastics, dance, and the acting was just a small part. I didn't have pushy par...
AARON TAYLOR-JOHNSON I was always a silent comedy nerd. I would stay up late and sneak downstairs to watch 'Saturday ...
MINDY KALING I've had such a hard time with dyslexia my whole life. When I was a child, I didn't learn to...
CHARLOTTE MCKINNEY Towards the end of last season, Titus was outstanding for us and I have been very happy with Jean-Al...
GRAEME SOUNESS I don't really read a lot. Maybe I should.
SYD BARRETT My parents are both average size. For them to have a child who was very, very different and very, ve...
WARWICK DAVIS

More Alain de Botton

Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Atheism is having a heyday in the born-again United States.
ALAIN DE BOTTON What bothers me is that there is so much emphasis on food, rather than gathering and meeting - so th...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuou...
ALAIN DE BOTTON One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.
ALAIN DE BOTTON The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON ...if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally blo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn
ALAIN DE BOTTON The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is c...
ALAIN DE BOTTON At the top of the slope on the perimeter of the site, overlooking six lanes of motorway, is a diner ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I was an incredibly lonely, very alienated teenager.
ALAIN DE BOTTON I am not a foodie, thank goodness. I will eat pretty much anything. A lot of my friends are getting ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There is militaristic-hegemonic-plutocratic side of the U.S. which is getting out of hand and threat...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It's almost a blessing when we meet people who naturally want to do the sort of things that are ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes yo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Small issues are really just large ones that haven't been accorded the requisite attention.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Fantasies can be great, but we shouldn't make the wedding a fantasy, because the wedding is the ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Most of the time, we make discoveries about how difficult people are at the moment when the difficul...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The thing is that love gives us a ringside seat on somebody else's flaws, so of course you'r...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I'm one of those introverted people who simply feels a lot better after spending time alone thin...
ALAIN DE BOTTON My dad was a slightly stricter version of Richard Dawkins. The worldview was that there are idiots o...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Laughter is an important part of a good relationship. It's an immense achievement when you can m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "lu...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We tend to think of philosophies as produced by professional philosophers. Traditionally, this has m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The romantic person instinctively sees marriage in terms of emotions, but what a couple actually get...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
ALAIN DE BOTTON What makes people good communicators is, in essence, an ability not to be fazed by the more problema...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which th...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Parents don't reveal how often they have bitten their tongue, fought back the tears, or been too...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The humanities have been forced to disguise, both from themselves and their students, why their subj...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I assemble my ideas in pieces on a computer file, then gradually find a place for them on a piece of...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Sometimes my biography is interpreted as the upbringing of a French aristocrat. It was very, very di...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
ALAIN DE BOTTON The more people you have to ask for permission, the more dangerous a project gets.
ALAIN DE BOTTON What annoys me about most self-help books is that they have no tragic sense. They have no sense that...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
ALAIN DE BOTTON The start receives such disproportionate attention because it isn't deemed to be just one phase amon...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
ALAIN DE BOTTON If you are pro love, you have to be a little bit disloyal to the romantic feelings that propel you i...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The number one person who needs my books is me. I'm not some sort of disinterested guru who has ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Parents become very good at not hearing the explicit words and listening instead to what the child m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Secular thinkers have a separation between thinking and doing. They don't have a grasp of the ba...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I waste most of the day, then finally start to write around 3 P.M., totally disgusted with myself fo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We have to put aside the customary historical reading of works of art in order to invite art to resp...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I remember going to university, and the people who'd left home for the first time looked at the ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Everyone's more vulnerable than they seem, and I think men are more vulnerable. Once you get clo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON At 'The School of Life', we take seriously anything that has to do with human fulfilment - a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A city like London is sociable in a sense that there are people gathering in bars and restaurants, c...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON As for despair, it comes about when I have been a fool and hate myself and despair of my personality...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Therapy and counseling can do wonderful things for people. But they have emerged so far as what are ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The idea that one might use art for 'instrumental' reasons tends to set off alarm bells at t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are never through with the requirement for acceptance. This isn't a curse limited to the inadequa...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentia...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - tha...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day-to-day take on things. The bare fa...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich peo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two p...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Katie Price is no exception. She, too, is - in a distinctive way - a philosopher. Partially, Katie P...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Used to do a lot of falling in love with people, almost in the street, and imagining that there woul...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Le Corbusier is an outstanding writer. His ideas achieved their impact in large measure because he c...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Since the beginning of the 20th century, the public's relationship to art has been weakened by a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There's a certain kind of insular, old-fashioned, upper-class Britishness that gives me the spoo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON After Carol had left, as Symons threw away a pile of used tissues and rearranged the cushions on the...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I've had my successes and failures. I know many academics in my field loathe me. I've come t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere - and I really don't get on with mach...
ALAIN DE BOTTON For thousands of years, it had been nature--and its supposed creator--that had had a monopoly on awe...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom
we know nothing. Romances...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A person cannot be at once a libertine and a married Romantic, however compelling both paradigms mig...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the inferiors of the virgin land they have repla...
ALAIN DE BOTTON What we typically call love is only the start of love. Our understanding of love has been hijacked a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON On account of its scale and complexity, the world will always outstrip the capacity of any single bo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writer...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Emotional life is - alongside work - one of the great challenges of existence and is a theme that I ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once (we soon feel ungrateful) or tho...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were w...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There are few more effective ways to promote tolerance between suspicious neighbours than to force t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There's a constant tension between the excitement of new people and security with one person. If...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never sav...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There is no one more likely to destroy us than the person we marry.
ALAIN DE BOTTON The challenge lies in knowing how to bring this sort of day to a close. His mind has been wound to a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Many people in the intellectual elite are very scared of shouting. They insist on very quiet murmurs...
ALAIN DE BOTTON as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status an...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Far from rejecting outright any hierarchy of success or failure, philosophy instead reconfigures the...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is according to how we are able to answer the question of what we do (normally the first enquiry ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the statu...
ALAIN DE BOTTON People who hold important positions in society are commonly labelled "somebodies," and their inverse...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answe...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There is a danger of developing a blanket distaste for modern life which could have its attractions ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire li...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
ALAIN DE BOTTON When does a job feel meaningful? Whenever it allows us to generate delight or reduce suffering in ot...
ALAIN DE BOTTON One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A good half of the art of living is resilience.
ALAIN DE BOTTON ...workplace dynamics are no less complicated or unexpectedly intense than family relations, with on...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are humiliated by what is powerful and mean, but awed by what is powerful and noble.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Literature has always had its circus side, its freaks and its frivolities - and maybe that's all par...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I love the idea of a university as away from capitalist values, where people can do things that don&...
ALAIN DE BOTTON What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent techno...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is one of the unexpected disasters of the modern age that our new unparalleled access to informat...
ALAIN DE BOTTON In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Blind impatience is equally evident in the fruit section. Our ancestors might have delighted in the ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surren...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t al...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who w...
ALAIN DE BOTTON In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Snobbery exists in all areas of life, not least literary criticism. By snobbery I mean, any method o...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to h...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I've tried to write about Heathrow before and been escorted off the premises.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Because I have this thing about birthdays--they always remind me of death and forced jollity.
ALAIN DE BOTTON He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on p...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The feeling one has no time to get anything done provides the pressure that guarantees one does get ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I'm fascinated by Comte's clear-eyed analysis of what was wrong with modern society, which i...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The most courageous act in politics is to try to understand your opponent.
ALAIN DE BOTTON The idea of a book that can make a change to your life, that can affect your perspective, is a beaut...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The philosophy I love is very selective. It is really just the bit that is involved in a search for ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is hope--with regard to our careers, our love lives, our children, our politicians, and our plane...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actu...
ALAIN DE BOTTON He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity--suggesting that a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There are books that speak to us of our own lives with a clarity we cannot match. They prevent the m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Travel is a lot like love.
ALAIN DE BOTTON What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
ALAIN DE BOTTON I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Learning to give up on perfection may be just about the most romantic move any of us could make.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Work is a way of bringing order to chaos, and there's a basic satisfaction in seeing that we are...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I like working with people. I believe change can only come through collaboration.
ALAIN DE BOTTON I see religion as a storehouse of lots of really good ideas that a secular world should look at, rai...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Rather than getting more spoilt with age, as difficulties pile up, epiphanies of gratitude abound.
ALAIN DE BOTTON For the rest of history, for most of us, our bright promise will always fall short of being actualis...
ALAIN DE BOTTON In 'Art as Therapy', we argue that art is a tool that can variously help to inspire, console...
ALAIN DE BOTTON In our more arrogant moments, the sin of pride—or superbia, in Augustine's Latin formulation—tak...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Partially undermining the manufacturer's ability to assert that its work constituted a meaningful co...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis o...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The solution as consumers is - perhaps surprisingly - to take adverts very, very seriously. We shoul...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We don't need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humani...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I think of myself as quite a shy person. But when I'm curious about something, I'll go quite...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Artworks are especially good at helping our psyches in a variety of ways: they rebalance our moods, ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON [T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister th...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Whatever modern democracies may tell themselves about their commitment to free speech and to diversi...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing coun...
ALAIN DE BOTTON To be loved by someone is to realize how much they share the same needs that lie at the heart of our...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as beautiful, intelligent, and...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
ALAIN DE BOTTON A storyteller who provided us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortu...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the const...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpre...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Even if our loved ones have assured us that they will be busy at work, even if they told us they hat...
ALAIN DE BOTTON You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneven...
ALAIN DE BOTTON What a peculiar civilisation this was: inordinately rich, yet inclined to accrue its wealth through ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as in...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We would like to go and see the field that Millet…shows us in his Springtime, we would like Claude...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Our feelings of anxiety are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss, and so need to be ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for maki...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we c...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Nature puts us all in our places. Being made to feel small isn't something we welcome when it's done...
ALAIN DE BOTTON in Flaubert’s eyes, that only entirely illiterate and uneducated Frenchmen now stood a chance of b...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A clean conscience is the preserve of those without sufficient imagination.
ALAIN DE BOTTON In the past, Flaubert implied, idiots had had no clue as to what the carbon structure of diamonds wa...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
ALAIN DE BOTTON But we would do well to meditate daily, rather as the religious do on their God, on the 9.5 trillion...
ALAIN DE BOTTON To a shameful extent, the charm of marriage boils down to how unpleasant it is to be alone. This isn...
ALAIN DE BOTTON One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
ALAIN DE BOTTON What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books written bec...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Unrequited love may be painful, but it is safely painful, because it does not involve inflicting dam...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Jarenlang kwam ik bij het boodschappen doen langs een huis dat weliswaar een van de lelijkste gebouw...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Snobbery exists in all areas of life, not least literary criticism. By snobbery I mean, any method o...
ALAIN BOTTON Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writer...
ALAIN BOTTON I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - tha...
ALAIN BOTTON I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day-to-day take on things. The bare fa...
ALAIN BOTTON