The solution as consumers is - perhaps surprisingly - to take adverts very, very seriously. We should ask ourselves what it is that we find lovely in them - the visions of friendship, togetherness, repose, or whatever. And then consider what would actually help us find these qualities in our lives.


Alain de Botton

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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
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