Alain de Botton Quotes

“A good half of the art of living is resilience.”

“Advertising is – quite often – alive to our real needs. It's just the products on offer might not be the things that will help us satisfy them.”

“Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.”

“Art can do the opposite of glamourise the unattainable: it can show us anew the genuine merit of life as we're forced to lead it. It is advertising for the things we really need.”

“Artworks are especially good at helping our psyches in a variety of ways: they rebalance our moods, lend us hope, usher in calm, stretch our sympathies, reignite our senses, and reawaken appreciation.”

“As in all areas, we can improve how good we are at loving another person.”

“Asking someone to be with us turns out to be an impossibly demanding and therefore pretty mean thing to suggest to anyone we would really want the best for.”

“At 'The School of Life', we take seriously anything that has to do with human fulfilment – and take note wherever insight on this subject can be found.”

“Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.”

“Compatibility is an achievement of love; it shouldn't be its precondition.”

“Everyone's more vulnerable than they seem, and I think men are more vulnerable.

Once you get close to a man, the whole thing's a facade anyway. I think manhood is fragile.”

“Fantasies can be great, but we shouldn't make the wedding a fantasy, because the wedding is the gateway to married life.

It shouldn't be a moment of illusion; it should be a moment of preparation.”

“I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.”

“I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it – that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.”

“I remember going to university, and the people who'd left home for the first time looked at the food and were horrified. Whereas, my view was that if it was vaguely edible, then it's fine.”

“I think of myself as quite a shy person. But when I'm curious about something, I'll go quite far to satisfy my curiosity.”

“I waste most of the day, then finally start to write around 3 P.M., totally disgusted with myself for my wasteful nature.”

“I'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage – which no previous society has ever believed.”

“In the early days of love sometimes, you will report an ecstatic feeling you have met someone who seems to understand you without you needing to speak.”

“Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.”

“It's almost a blessing when we meet people who naturally want to do the sort of things that are in high demand in society.

What a gift to do that, as opposed to other people who would say, 'I want to be a novelist but actually I have to be an accountant'.”

“Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.”

“Katie Price is no exception. She, too, is – in a distinctive way – a philosopher. Partially, Katie Price's philosophy is one of extraordinary confidence.

She is remarkable not for her looks or antics but because of her tremendous self-assurance and her unwillingness to be intimidated by criticism or failure.”

“Learning to give up on perfection may be just about the most romantic move any of us could make.”

“Love is something that we need to learn.”

“Many moments in religion seem attractive to me even though I can't believe in any of it.”

“Many people in the intellectual elite are very scared of shouting. They insist on very quiet murmurs.”

“Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.”

“One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?”

“One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.”