Quotes from Alain de Botton

Insofar as we appreciate order, it is when we perceive it as being accompanied by complexity, when we feel that a variety of elements has been brought to order--that windows, doors and other details have been knitted into a scheme that manages to be at once regular and intricate. (p184)

Differ though we might with Christianity's view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis, which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one--that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life.

It was as if a vital evolutionary advantage had been bestowed centuries ago on those members of the species who lived in a state of concern about what was to happen next. These ancestors might have failed to savour their experiences appropriately, but they had at least survived and shaped the character of their descendants, while their more focused siblings, at one with the moment and with the place where they stood, had met violent ends on the horns of unforeseen bison.

Cynics are, in the end, only idealists with awkwardly high standards.

We can conclude from this that we are drawn to call something beautiful whenever we detect that it contains in a concentrated form those qualities in which we personally, or our societies more generally, are deficient. We respect a style which can move us away from what we fear and towards what we crave: a style which carries the correct dosage of our missing virtues.

Artistic talent is like a brilliant firework which streaks across a pitch-black night, inspiring awe among onlookers but extinguishing itself in seconds, leaving behind only darkness and longing.

While mourning the number of missed opportunities, we have no reason to abandon a belief in the ever-present possibility of moulding circumstances for the better.

A marriage doesn't begin with a proposal, or even an initial meeting. It begins far earlier, when the idea of love is born, and more specifically the dream of a soul mate.

We place such demands on our partners, and become so unreasonable around them, because we have faith that someone who understands obscure parts of us, whose presence solves so many of our woes, must somehow also be able to fix everything about our lives. We exaggerate the other's powers in a curious sort of homage—heard in adult life decades down the line—to a small child's awe at their own parents' apparently miraculous capacities.

The beginning of revolutions is psychologically strikingly akin to that of certain relationships: the stress on unity, the sense of omnipotence, the desire to eliminate secrets (with the fear of the opposite soon leading to lover's paranoia and the creation of a secret police).

wisdom lies in correctly discerning where we are free to mould reality according to our wishes and where we must accept the unalterable with tranquillity. The

With no attempt there can be no failure; with no failure no humiliation. So our self-esteem in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do. It is determined by the ratio of our actualities to our supposed potentialities.

Does beauty give birth to love? Or does love give birth to beauty? Did I love Chloe because she was beautiful? Or was she beautiful because I loved her?

No one properly gets, or can fully sympathize with, anyone else.

Even if our loved ones have assured us that they'll be busy at work, even if they told us they hated us for going travelling in the first place, even if they left us last June or died twelve years ago, it is impossible not to experience a shiver of a sense that they may have come along anyway, just to surprise us and make us feel special.

In the end, I've found that it doesn't really matter who you marry. If you like them at the beginning, you probably won't like them at the end. And if you start off hating them, there's always the chance you'll end up thinking they're all right.

Adulthood involves learning to conclusively bury a great many of our hopes.

Public life is debased because it's only the nice people who are worried about imposing their views on others.

The most uncouth of our afflictions is to despise our being. Rather than trying to cut ourselves in two, we should cease waging civil war on our perplexing physical envelopes and learn to accept them as unalterable facts of our condition; neither so terrible, nor so humiliating.

In Montaigne's redrawn portrait of the adequate, semi-rational human being, it is possible to speak no Greek, fart, change one's mind after a meal, get bored with books, know none of the ancient philosophers and mistake Scipios. A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.

Though debts are condemned in the financial world, the world of friendship and love may perversely depend on well-managed debts.

After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.

The media insists on taking what someone didn't mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.

It would be insane to call Hamlet a loser, though he has lost and I think that is the lesson of tragedy.