Small issues are really just large ones that haven't been accorded the requisite attention.
Alain de Botton
Related
It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are humiliated by what is powerful and mean, but awed by what is powerful and noble.
ALAIN DE BOTTON I mean, I haven't been completely lacking in some enjoyment of Chuck Berry or Buddy Holly. But I...
WARREN ZEVON Political conservatives need to recognize that multicultural politics is converging with leftist pol...
TOM TANCREDO I really woke up one morning and said, you know, 'I haven't seen a good film about the Ameri...
IRWIN WINKLER Nigeria is like everywhere, really: there are some beautiful places that have been invested in and o...
TINIE TEMPAH Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.
ALBERT EINSTEIN Out of all artists, authors are the least trained for the spotlight. Wanting attention isn't a r...
SLOANE CROSLEY In the end we're all Jerry Springer Show guests, really, we just haven't been on the show.
MARILYN MANSON I'm just looking for really good projects with varying characters - ones I haven't done befo...
COBIE SMULDERS The theory has to be interpreted that extra dimensions beyond the ordinary four dimensions the three...
EDWARD WITTEN But I quite like that the public has a very short attention span. If I haven't been on telly for...
SOPHIE ELLIS-BEXTOR Generally, Iowans are Iowans no matter where you go. There are some different issues in Des Moines t...
TOM LATHAM I must admit that I don't really understand social networking models that well, and I haven'...
DAVID CHERITON I'm a storyteller; that's what exploration really is all about. Going to places where others...
JAMES CAMERON For a couple of days after chemotherapy, food tastes really bland, even the best foods. I haven'...
GRETE WAITZ It really annoys me that I'm vain, but unfortunately, I haven't been able to discard that te...
CARRIE FISHER I haven't been really nervous about a gig in a long time.
BILL ENGVALL Again, the truth of the matter is we haven't paid that much attention to high school accountabil...
MARGARET SPELLINGS I think the stigma surrounding mental illness and also the stigma surrounding self-esteem issues or ...
BRITTANY SNOW The large-cap stocks tend to be the ones that are most interest rate sensitive. With the changes at ...
BILL SICKLES Almost every script that I've gotten has been for sort of the generic Hollywood type. I haven...
BEN BARNES I haven't been to Tasmania. I haven't been to the South Pole, and I haven't been to the ...
MARTHA STEWART I do love that witches haven't really been explored that much. Usually, witches are the little s...
MADCHEN AMICK The ones that are not on yet are probably the ones that are going to require more time and attention...
BOB SLAUGHTER Obama hasn't been divisive just because his policies are so unpopular, though that's a large...
DAVID LIMBAUGH I'll wear my mom jeans in public that haven't been tailored 'just so' yet, just beca...
ANNE HATHAWAY ...avoidance of small mistakes makes the large ones more severe.
NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB I just want to be the best. I haven't been in an all-out war. That doesn't mean I'm not ...
FLOYD MAYWEATHER, JR. The things we know best are the things we haven't been taught.
LUC DE CLAPIERS Well, I haven't really been able to shoot in California for a while. Little movies yeah, but the...
JOEL SILVER Men don't pay attention to small things.
KATHERINE JOHNSON I've been a loner all the time throughout my life... I haven't been the best father... Many ...
B. B. KING I haven't scoured Dixie out of my voice. But I don't think that the books that I have writte...
RICHARD FORD When you get something for nothing, you just haven't been billed for it yet.
FRANKLIN P. JONES Luckily, I haven't been offered any $300 million movies that I hate. So I'm not in that pred...
JAMES FRECHEVILLE Failure doesn't mean you are a failure it just means you haven't succeeded yet.
ROBERT H. SCHULLER Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.
EMILE M. CIORAN Racism is a sign of ignorance, in my opinion. It's people who haven't been anywhere, haven...
TYSON FURY People who have what they want are fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they r...
OGDEN NASH Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time - like to ha...
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE As much as I can and am able to, with the projects that are presented to me, I try to just really ch...
MICHELLE MONAGHAN I haven't had to struggle very much. I haven't paid my dues. I think I have been lucky.
COLIN FIRTH I haven't won a World Cup. There's things that haven't been finished, and I'm not af...
ABBY WAMBACH Big stuff and little: learning how to order breakfast in a country where I don't speak the langu...
ANTHONY BOURDAIN There are works that literally haven?t been on view for decades.
GEORGE SHACKELFORD There are too many books I haven't read, too many places I haven't seen, too many memories I...
IRWIN SHAW I don't know what other people are like, I haven't been able to crawl inside anybody else.
IRIS DEMENT Well, with so many space shuttle missions that we've done, I think it's just sort of natural...
ELLEN OCHOA Life is made up of small pleasures. Happiness is made up of those tiny successes. The big ones come ...
NORMAN LEAR Focus on your big problems and pay attention to your small ones.
JIM GENOVESE Friendship... is not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of fr...
MUHAMMAD ALI I come from the place of thinking, 'Whatever works for people' - and if you haven't been...
RACHAEL HARRIS You don't just have to be influenced by rock, or goth, anymore. It's okay to say, 'My in...
GRIMES I'm probably not very funny. The scripts just don't come in, or the ones that do aren't ...
RAY WINSTONE We're quite into graphics that are simultaneously two- and three-dimensional. But I can't re...
SEAN BOOTH It isn't a secret that my heart is damaged. All the treatments and medications haven't been ...
MOSHE DAYAN I really never stopped thinking about Ellen, because I just haven't felt that kind of energy wit...
PORTIA DE ROSSI In general, good tools for staying in sync just haven't been built and made available to the wor...
JUSTIN ROSENSTEIN But those are not the only issues. Those are just the issues that we think are critical. If we can't...
JIM ROBINSON People think that they just want movies like Pretty Woman, when really they - at least the ones that...
WINONA RYDER Depression - it falls into that small category of things like combat that, if you haven't been i...
DICK CAVETT To say that I'm going to veto something that I haven't read is just - or sign something that...
DOUG DUCEY I think our kids have tried really hard, and played really hard. There?s just been times late in cru...
KIRBY DEAN I tended to write poems about both social and spiritual problems, and some problems one doesn't ...
C. K. WILLIAMS I've been influenced by a lot of films. And a lot of them are the typical interesting, artsy fil...
PATTY JENKINS I'm going to be doing solo stuff. The idea is to do 'small' and 'off my beaten path,...
PATTY GRIFFIN Everyone's been so quick to say that I'm really thick or I haven't got a brain. People w...
DAVID BECKHAM I haven't been on the stage in a long time.
ERIKA SLEZAK If you learn from defeat, you haven't really lost.
ZIG ZIGLAR I've always been a happy-go-lucky person. I haven't got any dark tales, I didn't draw on...
VICKY MCCLURE According to God's word, we haven't done a very good job concerning our little ones, nor our...
VANITY If you're going to be part of a nationally televised show that airs live and do sketches that ha...
CASEY WILSON It's really weird to be playing chords again. Haven't played chords for a long time. I reali...
ED O'BRIEN I've been to two festivals in my life, and I've never been to Toronto. I haven't really ...
JOSS WHEDON I really don't mind dying because I figure I haven't wasted this life.
ROBERT M. PIRSIG Keep within the requisite limits a standing military force, always remembering that an armed and tra...
JAMES MADISON Not all journalists are really journalists. They ask such stupid questions sometimes, especially the...
RAY LIOTTA Most people's journeys haven't been as disjointed as mine.
DELTA GOODREM Just because I've got blonde hair and haven't been to Bosnia doesn't mean I'm a bimb...
JILL DANDO I've done movies with a sword before. But I haven't really been given the full responsibilit...
ORLANDO BLOOM I don't really need to stand out, there's room for everyone. Although I haven't built a ...
ADELE I don't have a classical-music mentality. I haven't been taught that way, and it doesn't...
AGNES OBEL There are fewer and fewer roles that I haven't done already, or archetypes that I haven't pl...
OCTAVIA SPENCER I haven't really focused so much on getting acting work.
CHARLENE TILTON Most of my recorded material has been in small group configurations. I have not released large orche...
BILL DIXON Everyone is trying to do something that hasn't been done and that's a really good thing. You...
DENNIS MUREN I haven't been approached to do anything, but I would certainly make room for it. It was a reall...
KATHY VALENTINE Anyway, I just haven't been able to find any humanity in any Republican candidate ever in my ent...
ALAN RUDOLPH Pristine vulnerability is just so boring to me. The performances that I love are ones like Gena Rowl...
KIRSTEN DUNST I haven't been given many things, but I've been given ample, limitless patience.
LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART I've always been passionate about acting. I haven't been passionate about being famous.
DAVID ALPAY Charity is just writing checks and not being engaged. Philanthropy, to me, is being engaged, not onl...
ELI BROAD The U.S. has fallen behind with tax policies that haven't been updated in a half-century.
ROB PORTMAN I haven't had a lot of 'Games Of Thrones' groupies. The fans seem to be really nice. The...
ALFIE ALLEN Great artists are the ones who have put their entire selves out there to be adored, humiliated, to b...
CARMEN EJOGO People are concerned, here again, about life, and haven't given a whole lot of attention to how ...
BIRCH BAYH I think I'm at a place where I haven't really been encountered by anyone overtly strange. Bu...
WARREN KOLE We have seen that even in the United States, which has tremendous resources at its command, planning...
FRED MITCHELL The stocks that have been successful are the ones that have reached a very large scale which is to s...
JAMES PREISSLER
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 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 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