Alain de Botton Quotes

The feeling one has no time to get anything done provides the pressure that guarantees one does get some things done.

The finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.

Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.

We are richer than we think, each one of us.

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 on our enthusiastic response to the task. Reasons to be inconsolable abound: the frailty of our bodies, the fickleness of love, the insincerities of social life, the compromises of friendship, the deadening effects of habit. In the face of such persistent ills, we might naturally expect that no event would be awaited with greater anticipation than the moment of our own extinction.

How pleasant to hold in mind, through the crevasses of our moods, at three in the afternoon when lassitude and despair threaten, that there is always a plane taking off for somewhere.

It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.

The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.

It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.

Despite our best efforts to clean it of its peculiarities, sex will never be either simple or nice in the ways we might like it to be.

When two people part, it is the one who is not in love who makes the tender speeches.

يُعد اهتمام الآخرين مُهمَا لنا لأننا بحكم طبيعتنا مُبتلون بانعدام يقين نحو قيمتنا الخاصة، و نتيجة لهذه البلوى فإننا ندع تقييمات الآخر لنا تلعب دوراً حاسماً في الطريقة التي نرى بها أنفسنا. إن إحساسنا بالهوية أسير في قبضة أحكام مَن نعيش بينهم.

Yet we can perhaps only ever fall in love without knowing quite who we have fallen in love with. The initial convulsion is necessarily founded on ignorance.

Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.

Being put in our place by something larger, older, greater than ourselves is not a humiliation; it should be accepted as a relief from our insanely hopeful ambitions for our lives.