Alain de Botton Quotes, Thoughts and images

There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.

Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own - but that we could never have described on our own.

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

The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.

Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.

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

The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things

Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.

Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.

The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.

I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.

Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.

Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.

It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.

One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.

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

We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.

What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.

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

Envy: a confused, tangled guide to one's own ambitions.

True love is a lack of desire to check one's smartphone in another's presence.

Not everyone is worth listening to.

The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.

Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.

What should worry us is not the number of people that oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so.

The best cure for one's bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.

We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.

A good half of the art of living is resilience.

Unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.

Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.

Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others.

Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.