In our more arrogant moments, the sin of pride—or superbia, in Augustine's Latin formulation—takes over our personalities and shuts us off from those around us. We become dull to others when all we seek to do is assert how well things are going for us, just as friendship has a chance to grow only when we fare to share what we are afraid of and regret. The rest is merely showmanship. The flaws whose exposure we so dread, the indiscretions we know we would be mocked for, the secrets that keep our conversations with our so-called friends superficial and inert—all of these emerge as simply part of the human condition.


Alain de Botton

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

Each of us views life through a different lens. What we think is colored by the baggage we carry, an...
LAURIE BUCHANAN, PHD
If we all look at life we think how nice, then we look at death and everybody goes oh you can say th...
GARY F EVANS...
If you love someone you must set them free like the wind and give them the respect they deserve.If y...
GARY F EVANS...
The words you can’t find, you borrow.
We read to know we’re not alone. We read because w...
GABRIELLE ZEVIN
If we're honest with ourselves, most of us know the one thing we lack.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
A couple of customers interrupted [...] who wanted to know if we had some YA book about ants and ali...
SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON
Air is approximately 21% oxygen, our brains feed off of oxygen. So basically we are all airheads.
ANDONI GARCIA
Inspired By Beauty In Creation We Are One
DANIEL GILMAN
Most of us think we're too busy or too important to rest for a day.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
The more we give, the more we reap the benefits of feeling good in helping others. We are all capabl...
ANGIE KARAN
We may not get to choose how we die, but we can chose how we live.
The universe may for...
SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON
Dreams are hopeful because they exist as pure possibility. Unlike memories, which are fossils, long ...
SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON
So, tomorrow, I'm leaving. And I'm not going to let that happen again with anyone else. I'm going to...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY
Orion is above the horizon now, and near it Jupiter, brighter than it will ever be ... But i expect ...
THOMAS HARRIS
I'm already gone. I died that night on the side of that road with my sister.
TRISHA LEAVER
Perfection isn't everything," she said as she turned and walked away. "I think the flaws are what ma...
TRISHA LEAVER
With her I'd buried myself, every memory of who I was now, six feet under with the sister I'd put th...
TRISHA LEAVER
Nothing can survive without food. Everything we consume acts either to heal us or to poison us. We t...
THICH NHAT HANH
I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made ...
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
It was pivotal in making you but you don't remember it. Or do you? Do we understand the events that ...
DOUGLAS COUPLAND
I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES
Come on... come on... I am waiting for answer...
...

Silence doesn't make it... bet...
DEYTH BANGER
Everything passes by, and we are left with just our memories
BEN OAK
What our closest friends do for us is to teach us true selflessness. We learn that while it might be...
MARK MOSSA
we
sat there
smoking
cigarettes
at
5
in the morning.
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
Because you can only die once but you can suffer forever.
SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON
We are far from perfect but willing to be different.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
We should not blame people by the mistakes of others.
DANIEL MELGAçO
I am aware that everyone that exists has a story, and we all exist because that story is important f...
ARZELL
Dae FATE NAYAE Nanagha Vandhuttoom Da, Sandy , Na Nata, London Lass,Russian Grapes, Ellorum Ippa Van...
SATHESH KUMAR M
The future belongs to all who, refusing to look back at the past move ahead with the clock as it tic...
ODO SIMON AGBO
The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that. And, yes, there are certainly time...
ELIZABETH EDWARDS
Everyone is the Umbrella Man and he is everyone. Every cough, sneeze, smile and wave means both ever...
CRAIG CLEVENGER
It is therefore of supreme importance that we consent to live not for ourselves but for others. When...
THOMAS MERTON
When we are at the worst times of our lives, when we are battling with something, or struggles, what...
RUSSELL WILSON
It's a lie to think that you are not good enough. It's a lie to think that you are not beautiful. It...
DISON ARNIBAL
Thus, when we plead for the gift of charity, we aren't asking for lovely feelings toward someone who...
SHERI DEW
Mistakes and slips are a necessary evil part of our daily living. We learn through them all the time...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
A crisis can knock us off balance, making us afraid, vulnerable, and ripe for change. This also happ...
JANET O. HAGBERG
The only thing that we cannot control is our supporters.
JOSE MOURINHO
We may all be inclined to think of man's countless foolish and selfish intentions, his twisted and m...
KARL BARTH
When you tell me your story or about yourself I understand who you are and are able to share who I a...
BRENT M. JONES
This oath is the oath we all swear. Not to a god, or a master, or to the Ludu Achillea...but to our ...
LESLEY LIVINGSTON
The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that. And yes, there are certainly times...
ELIZABETH EDWARDS
How sweet it would be to treat men and things, for an hour, for just what they are! [...] When we ar...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
We are children, perhaps, at the very moment when we know that it is as children that God loves us -...
FREDERICK BUECHNER
If we're honest, most of us are doing okay.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
As we experience this love, there is a temptation at times to become hostile to our earlier understa...
ROB BELL
We all have those things that help us carry on through life. It is important that these things upon ...
L.M. BROWNING
What love is it, then, that has no need of words to call us? In whose image are we made, to take suc...
CHRISTIAN BOBIN
As we are, so we do; and as we do, so is it done to us; we are the builders of our fortunes.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
We all know, from what we experience with and within ourselves, that our conscious acts spring from ...
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Each time we surrender, we find once more that the desperation that drives us to our knees fuels the...
NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS
We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. ...
STANISłAW LEM
In periods of rapid personal change, we pass through life as though we are spellcast. We speak in se...
DOUGLAS COUPLAND
When I look in the mirror, I see a woman with secrets. When we don’t listen to our intuition, we a...
TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS
The Bible consistently and directly indicates that when we give generously, we're serving, honoring,...
CRAIG GROESCHEL
Followers of Christ are not called to be merely tolerant of others. We are called to love those who ...
TIM MUEHLHOFF
We all have thorns in our flesh. All of us. Love is when we stay and help someone pluck out their th...
C. JOYBELL C.
This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe r...
ELIZABETH GILBERT
When we die our deeds shall be left for humanity to judge & our flesh shall become dust for humanity...
DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN)
All love is bittersweet. Love is inexplicable; it is part poetry and part masochism. Part of love is...
KILROY J. OLDSTER
Thus it often is with us, we take a course, and we keep to it, as if we were infallible, and we allo...
G.A. HENTY
We learn that our spirit is not apart from us; it is a part of us. We gain awareness of the exact na...
NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS
We've always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible. And we count these moments...
COOPER - INTERSTELLAR
Are shadows a shadowy reflection of the soul or is it a reflection of who we really are, or possibly...
GARY F EVANS...
We are this fucking stick in the end...
DEYTH BANGER
We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would...
WENDELL BERRY
Let us know our differences! Let us understand our differences! Let us know and understand that we a...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
We ought to, as human beings, have the courage to seek a collective “truth” that benefits our sp...
TARUN BETALA
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond meas...
MARYANNE WILLIAMSON
We are commanded to love God with all our minds, as well as with all our hearts, and we commit a gre...
ANGELINA GRIMKE
You are worth more than you think you are
SOTONYE ANGA
The answer isn't more time but a greater awareness of the time we have.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
Every little gracious act adds to the quotient of grace in the world - how gracious can you be today...
ANGIE KARAN
So long as we do not know definitely what we want, our forces will be scattered, and so long as our ...
CHRISTIAN D. LARSON
Outside... we are just nobody... you could meet me outside... but it doesn't mean that I am DeYtH Ba...
DEYTH BANGER
We have magnificent brains, but we use a great deal of our brilliance to keep ourselves stuck and ig...
PATRICIA SUN
Weirdly enough, the more we give away, the richer we become.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
We all need a technological detox; we need to throw away our phones and computers instead of using t...
EVAN SUTTER
We humans may be brilliant and we may be special, but we are still connected to the rest of life. No...
PATRICIA B. MCCONNELL
Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we...
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Most of us are not raised to actively encounter our destiny. We may not know that we have one. As ch...
JULIA CAMERON
What will happen if we go to 0 day?
...

Everything has been wipe out from the techno...
DEYTH BANGER
Our country is the world, our countrymen all mankind. We love the land of our nativity, only as we l...
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON
35. God is entitled to a portion of our income—not because He needs it but because we need to give...
JAMES C. DOBSON
When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit our lives are all that really belong to us. S...
CESAR CHAVEZ
Friends and neighbors, the taxes are indeed very heavy, and if those laid on by the government were ...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Our imperfections make us unique and also BEAUTIFUL. Some beautiful things are more impressive when ...
ANGIE KARAN
There are books that speak to us of our own lives with a clarity we cannot match. They prevent the m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON
Courage is the starting point of everything good. To love another is to automatically feed the fire ...
DONNA GODDARD
A tree has roots in the soil yet reaches to the sky. It tells us that in order to aspire we need to ...
WANGARI MAATHAI
It's in the morning, for most of us. It's that time, those few seconds when we're coming out of slee...
JERRY SPINELLI
One of the greatest titles we can have is "old friend". We never appreciate how important old
f...
GRANT FAIRLEY
One of the greatest titles we can have is "old friend". We never appreciate how important old friend...
GRANT FAIRLEY
We define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the things our signif...
CHARLES TAYLOR
When we vote, when we talk to our friends about what matters to us, when we choose whose lives we pa...
JOHN GREEN
We hate Simple Minds. They were no.1 in our Top Five Bands or Musicians who will have to be shot com...
NICK HORNBY
If we can't make any mistakes in front of anyone, how can anyone make any mistakes in front of us? I...
AKIROQ BROST
We are aberrations—beings born undead, neither one thing nor another, or two things at once … un...
THOMAS LIGOTTI

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