To a shameful extent, the charm of marriage boils down to how unpleasant it is to be alone. This isn’t necessarily our fault as individuals. Society as a whole appears determined to render the single state as nettlesome and depressing as possible: once the freewheeling days of school and university are over, company and warmth become dispiritingly hard to find; social life starts to revolve oppressively around couples; there’s no one left to call or hang out with. It’s hardly surprising, then, if when we find someone halfway decent, we might cling.


Alain de Botton

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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.
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In our more arrogant moments, the sin of pride—or superbia, in Augustine's Latin formulation—tak...
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Partially undermining the manufacturer's ability to assert that its work constituted a meaningful co...
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Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis o...
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The solution as consumers is - perhaps surprisingly - to take adverts very, very seriously. We shoul...
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We don't need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have m...
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To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humani...
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I think of myself as quite a shy person. But when I'm curious about something, I'll go quite...
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Artworks are especially good at helping our psyches in a variety of ways: they rebalance our moods, ...
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[T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister th...
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It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will...
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The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true.
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Whatever modern democracies may tell themselves about their commitment to free speech and to diversi...
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The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing coun...
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To be loved by someone is to realize how much they share the same needs that lie at the heart of our...
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We fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as beautiful, intelligent, and...
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Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
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A storyteller who provided us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortu...
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We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up...
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The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the const...
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Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpre...
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We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for ...
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Even if our loved ones have assured us that they will be busy at work, even if they told us they hat...
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You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneven...
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What a peculiar civilisation this was: inordinately rich, yet inclined to accrue its wealth through ...
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Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as in...
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We would like to go and see the field that Millet…shows us in his Springtime, we would like Claude...
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Our feelings of anxiety are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss, and so need to be ...
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Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for maki...
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It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however...
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Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we c...
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Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won...
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Nature puts us all in our places. Being made to feel small isn't something we welcome when it's done...
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in Flaubert’s eyes, that only entirely illiterate and uneducated Frenchmen now stood a chance of b...
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A clean conscience is the preserve of those without sufficient imagination.
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In the past, Flaubert implied, idiots had had no clue as to what the carbon structure of diamonds wa...
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Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
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But we would do well to meditate daily, rather as the religious do on their God, on the 9.5 trillion...
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One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
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What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of ...
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Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books written bec...
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It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we ...
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Unrequited love may be painful, but it is safely painful, because it does not involve inflicting dam...
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It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as t...
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Jarenlang kwam ik bij het boodschappen doen langs een huis dat weliswaar een van de lelijkste gebouw...
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Snobbery exists in all areas of life, not least literary criticism. By snobbery I mean, any method o...
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Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writer...
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I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - tha...
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I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day-to-day take on things. The bare fa...
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