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The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.


Alain de Botton

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I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES We are humiliated by what is powerful and mean, but awed by what is powerful and noble.
ALAIN DE BOTTON I'm always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It i...
FLANNERY O'CONNOR Be kind. We never know what people are going through. Give grace and mercy because one day your circ...
GERMANY KENT For starters, that’s a rather simple principle of Time Travel right there – and according to the...
CHRISTINA ENGELA Avoid the temptation to force a moment so you won’t miss the one with your name on it.
GINA GREENLEE We have tears in our eyes
As we wave our goodbyes,
We so loved being with you, we three. ROALD DAHL Kindness is universal. Sometimes being kind allows others to see the goodness in humanity through yo...
GERMANY KENT Eros (or call it lust if you will), is like a beautiful, magnificent Afghan Hound! A pure white Afgh...
C. JOYBELL C. It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The mark of a real man, is a man who can allow himself to fall deeply in love with a woman. But the ...
C. JOYBELL C. (All the grief she had suffered over her lifetime had moulded her face into a mask of eternal sadnes...
JEAN SASSON Hard to restrain, unstable is this mind; it flits wherever it lists. Good it is to control the mind....
GAUTAMA BUDDHA Reach out and help others. If you have the power to make someone happy, do it. Be a vessel, be the c...
GERMANY KENT Clay in the hands of a good potter suffers so many good turns, but in the end, we see its real and t...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH We pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth ha...
L.M. MONTGOMERY And these Things,
which live by perishing, know you are praising them; transient,
they lo...
RAINER MARIA RILKE He's for you and wants to help you be the person He created you to be.
CRAIG GROESCHEL Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over.
RICHARD CARLSON Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you...
C. JOYBELL C. Percy was getting tired of water.
If he said that aloud, he would probably get kicked out of Po...
RICK RIORDAN When each and every believer rises up to serve others and function according to their capacity, the ...
HENRY HON A crook and crafty rules the place where the majority of the population is either hypocrites or fool...
ANUJ SOMANY Nature’s law is such that it metes out its justice to everyone as they deserve by giving each pers...
ANUJ SOMANY Every living being, from ants to whales, has a right to live and die in accordance with the law of t...
CHANDRABABU V.S. Any change one effect on his natural being with a purpose would definitely end up revealing his hypo...
CHANDRABABU V.S. In the journey of life, certain paths may seem to be leading nowhere because of a mountain or hill o...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH What lies ahead of you is better than what you have already experienced.
JAACHYNMA N.E. AGU At the end of the warehouse was a dais constructed from pallets of books: stack of vampire novels, w...
RICK RIORDAN May I never neither turn left nor turn right in my journey of life, but may I go straight to Christ ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Rise up & attack the day with Passion. The struggle you're in today is developing the strength y...
NAPZ CHERUB PELLAZO Now is the only time we have, and the only time we have any control over.
RICHARD CARLSON The real thing that keeps men and women apart, is fear. Women blame men and men blame women, but the...
C. JOYBELL C. God created us in his image, male and female, with personhood and sexual passions, so that when he c...
JOHN PIPER Who are we if not the stories we pass down? What happens when there's no one left to tell those stor...
CARRIE RYAN Anger - a beast within us that needs taming.
SARU SINGHAL In a world in which the common rule which binds and regulates what the general masses feel is underm...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Just because you believe something was true in the past does not mean it will be true in the future.
JEFFREY FRY And what good is a voice when so few will listen?
STACEY JAY It was because they were two parts of a whole. He did not belong to her. And she did not belong to h...
RENEE AHDIEH Cease with the displays of false modesty. The entire palace knows about it."
A feeling of warmt...
RENEE AHDIEH Do you know why I adore roses?" Shahrzad untied the knot of his tikka sash with deliberate slowness....
RENEE AHDIEH Where were you?" Shahrzad tried to control the tremor in her voice.
"Not where I should have b...
RENEE AHDIEH As always. As ever. As a rose to the sun.
RENEE AHDIEH Forever is a long long time and time has a way of changing things
WALT DISNEY COMPANY When we put LIVE backwards it spells EVIL, interesting how one word can have two totally opposing me...
GARY F EVANS... I love you." she whispered into the rough wool of his sweater.
L.J. SMITH And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three,...
MONTY PYTHON I make mistakes. That's what I do. I
speak without thinking, I act without
knowing. I d...
CANDACE BUSHNELL Be the best of you. Don’t do what society, your surroundings, or circumstances expect you to do. D...
DR ANIL KUMAR SINHA The kindness that we receive from others in life, is also the kindness that we will want to give. Th...
C. JOYBELL C. We still should have enough time to reach Rome.”
Hazel scowled. “When you say should hav...
RICK RIORDAN This is Buford,” Leo announced.
“You name your furniture?” Frank asked.
RICK RIORDAN He’d learned years ago it was better not to dwell too much on who was related to whom on the godly...
RICK RIORDAN Did someone just call me the wine dude?” he asked in a lazy drawl. “It’s Bacchus, pleas...
RICK RIORDAN Reyna looked at Percy without much hope. “You do have a plan?”
Percy wanted to step ...
RICK RIORDAN Percy blinked. “So your brother is a winged horse. But you’re also my half brother, which means ...
RICK RIORDAN I can’t believe how much this place has grown,” Hazel muttered.
The taxi driver grinned in...
RICK RIORDAN Absoballylutely top hole, wot. A and B the C of D I'd say. . . Above and Beyond the Call of Duty.
BRIAN JACQUES The close relationship between railroad expansion and the genera development and prosperity of the c...
JOHN MOODY How to change the world:
• spread positivity
• bring people up instead of dragging the...
GERMANY KENT From the Kindle Book Reflections in the Mirror of Life:
“In a slum somewhere in India
As...
THE PROPHET OF LIFE The unfortunate thing is that, sometimes, we slip, but, fortunately, consciously or unconsciously, w...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH I don't know if I have a favorite color.
KATE MIDDLETON It's very special having a new little girl.
KATE MIDDLETON The warm sound of her laughter stole through Khalid's skin, heating the coldest reaches of his soul.
RENEE AHDIEH Victory does not come to cowards;it comes to the brave ones.
JAACHYNMA N.E. AGU Everyone gets dumped and everyone gets hurt and there's karma to love in regards to what you'...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS My dad's quite a conservative person, and he brought me up to be very questioning of the commerc...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS I don't think she's a lesbian. I think she just ran out of men. [Charlotte]
SEX AND THE CITY When you are with the wrong person, who doesn't really love you, all you want is to be adored. I...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS I really like the look of the 1950s, lots of suburban Americana influences. I'm 5'4', so...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS I am very curvy, so the vintage stores suit me better than most designers. I just can't seem to ...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS I have quite a lot of plastic sunglasses. It's just a nice accessory, it adds a final thing, and...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS I lived in Greece for about four years of my life, and living there had a huge impact on my life gro...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS I love natural beauty, and I think it's your best look, but I think makeup as an artist is so tr...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS I think celebrity culture and sexuality in pop music is really important, but I want there to be an ...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS I'm not really part of that 'L.A. thing' or that celebrity culture. I'm more like so...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS This obsession with celebrity culture is really unhealthy. I don't want to live my life like tha...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS Even when I see a beautiful woman, I think, 'Aw, her life must be amazing.' Everyone does it...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS Blonde symbolises sexuality and power - it holds very different connotations. The archetypal star ha...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS Love is really my nemesis. I never really allowed myself to indulge in such basic things because I w...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS Britney Spears is a big influence. Huge. I think people thought I was joking about that for a long t...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS Puberty is a phase... fifteen years of rejection is a lifestyle. [Stanford]
SEX AND THE CITY I criticized the whole American songwriting industry and the pop side of it and I was bitter about i...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS I often take things I find in vintage crawls and hand them to a very good seamstress, who then repli...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS I've read every Madonna biography. I've also looked up every pop star to see how they first ...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS Oh my God, she's fashion road-kill!
SEX AND THE CITY I love you, but I love myself more.
SEX AND THE CITY Maybe mistakes are what make our fate... without them what would shape our lives? Maybe if we had ne...
SEX AND THE CITY Desperate Housewives.
SEX AND THE CITY Sean (while ice-skating with Carrie): I'm guessing it's easier to balance when you're not smoking.Ca...
SEX AND THE CITY I want you to look at me, connect with me. This is lovemaking, it's not a porno flick. [Maria]
SEX AND THE CITY I once was broken up with by a guy's doorman. 'I'm sorry Ms. Hobbes, Jonathan won't be coming down. ...
SEX AND THE CITY I feel like everyone has the right to privacy, even if you're the most famous person in the worl...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS When you are in the studio, you don't have anybody to feed off of; meanwhile, when you are playi...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS I am absolutely not a roll-on-stage kind of girl! I would be totally freaked out if I didn't war...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS It's a slippery slope, Carrie. Without boundaries you never know what might happen. [Miranda]
SEX AND THE CITY the sort of person who'd back Proposition 14.
SEX AND THE CITY A stud is born! [Stanford]
SEX AND THE CITY

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 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 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