The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.
—Alain de Botton
Topics: Love
If we are not regularly deeply embarrassed by who we are, the journey to self-knowledge hasn’t begun.
—Alain de Botton
It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love.
—Alain de Botton
If the world seems unfair or beyond our understanding, sublime places suggest that it is not surprising that things should be thus. We are the playthings of the forces that laid out the oceans and chiselled the mountains.
—Alain de Botton
Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
—Alain de Botton
The double betrayal of a modern liberal arts education: it neither teaches you how to live nor how to work.
—Alain de Botton
A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.
—Alain de Botton
The person who is best suited to us is not the person who shares our every taste (he or she doesn’t exist), but the person who can negotiate differences in taste intelligently — the person who is good at disagreement. Rather than some notional idea of perfect complementarity, it is the capacity to tolerate differences with generosity that is the true marker of the “not overly wrong” person. Compatibility is an achievement of love; it must not be its precondition.
—Alain de Botton
In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn’t worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there’s no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven’t had a good time, “Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?”
—Alain de Botton
Topics: Death
Always remember that the news is always trying to make you scared. It’s bad for us, but very good for news organisations: the easiest way to get an audience is through frightening people. And sometimes they give massive hope about there being a cure for cancer! We need to return to that sober mentality of the guys the news replaced: life is a cycle—there’s no need to go from extreme hope to fear.
—Alain de Botton
There are few things humans are more dedicated to than unhappiness. Had we been placed on earth by a malign creator for the exclusive purpose of suffering, we would have good reason to congratulate ourselves.
—Alain de Botton
If it is true that love is the pursuit in another of qualities we lack in ourselves, then in our love of someone from another culture, one ambition may be to weld ourselves more closely to values missing from our own culture.
—Alain de Botton
…if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody.
—Alain de Botton
Topics: Love
The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.
—Alain de Botton
We pick our friends not only because they are kind and enjoyable company, but also, perhaps more importantly, because they understand us for who we think we are.
—Alain de Botton
Not everything which happens to us occurs with reference to something about us.
—Alain de Botton
We may be powerless to alter certain events, but we remain free to choose our attitude towards them, and it is in our spontaneous acceptance of necessity that we find our distinctive freedom.
—Alain de Botton
We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.
—Alain de Botton
Topics: Fortune
He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.
—Alain de Botton
Topics: Depression
A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.
—Alain de Botton
The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.
—Alain de Botton
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Harold Pinter British Playwright
- Albert Einstein German-born Theoretical Physicist
- Jeremy Bentham British Philosopher, Economist
- Bertrand A. Russell British Philosopher, Mathematician
- Oliver Sacks British Neurologist, Writer
- Jonathan Miller English Stage Director
- David Bohm American Physicist
- Arthur C. Clarke English Science-fiction Writer
- Emma Goldman American Anarchist
- Richard Dawkins British Ethologist, Atheist
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