Quotes from Alain de Botton

We should add: it is a privilege to be the recipient of a sulk; it means the other person respects and trusts us enough to think we should understand their unspoken hurt. It is one of the odder gifts of love. Eventually

It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.

We might define art as anything which pushes our thoughts in important yet neglected directions.

Delusions are not harmful in themselves, they only hurt when one is alone in believing in them, when one cannot create an environment in which they can be sustained.

We must, between periods of digging in the dark, endeavour always to transform our tears into knowledge.

Let's make sure our ideas of success are our own, that we are truly the authors of our own ambitions.

Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way – towards a busy street or terminal – before they run out of their burrows.

It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we should begin to be concerned, for this may be the surest sign that we are being gently lied to or shielded from the other's imagination, whether out of kindness or from a touching fear of losing our love. It may mean that we have, despite ourselves, shut our ears to information that fails to conform to our hopes—hopes which will thereby be endangered all the more. Rabih

We must live with our enemies as if they might one day become our friends, and live with our friends as if they might some time or other become our enemies'.

Long before we've had a chance to become truly familiar with our loved one, we may be filled with the curious sense that we know them already. It can seem as though we've met them somewhere before, in a previous life, perhaps, or in our dreams.

The fear of forgetting anything precious can trigger in us the wish to raise a structure, like a paperweight to hold down our memories. We might even follow the example of the Countess of Mount Edgcumbe, who in the late eighteenth century had a thirty-foot-high Neoclassical obelisk erected on a hill on the outskirts of Plymouth, in memory of an unusually sensitive pig called Cupid, whom she did not hesitate to call a true friend.

Therefore, in the mature account of love, we should never fall at first glance. We should reserve our leap until we have completed a clear-eyed investigation of the depths and nature of the waters. Only after we have undertaken a thorough exchange of opinions on parenting, politics, art, science, and appropriate snacks for the kitchen should two people ever decide they are ready to love each other.

Tendemos a nos apegar a uma noção fixa das emoções, como se existisse uma linha entre amar e não amar que pudesse ser cruzada somente duas vezes, no início e no fim de um relacionamento, em vez de transposta minuto a minuto.

Tame it though we may try, sex has a recurring tendency to wreak havoc across our lives: it leads us to destroy our relationships, threatens our productivity and compels us to stay up too late in nightclubs talking to people whom we don't like but whose exposed midriffs we nevertheless strongly wish to touch.

He will conclude that love can endure only when one is unfaithful to its beguiling opening ambitions; and that for his relationships to work he will need to give up on the feelings that got him into them in the first place. He will need to learn that love is a skill rather than an enthusiasm.

Un paradox al c?rÈ›ilor scrise de alÈ›i oameni este c? ele ne spun adesea mai multe despre propria noastr? via?? decât am fost în stare s? înÈ›elegem singuri.

For most of our lives, sex seems fated to remain steeped in longing and awkwardness. Whatever the manuals may promise, there are really no solutions to the majority of the dilemmas sex creates for us.

the truth is that being yourself... fully yourself around another human being is a treat that you should probably spare anyone that you claim to love

Like many other outstanding examples of the genre, Ingres's portrait teaches us that appearance can be a bearer of authentic meaning.

Overcoming childhood could be understood as an attempt to correct the false stories of others.

Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval. That

As David lifted a suitcase onto the conveyor belt, he came to an unexpected and troubling realisation: that he was bringing himself with him on his holiday. Whatever the qualities of the Dimitra Residence, they were going to be critically undermined by the fact that he would be in the villa as well.

We should add: it is a privilege to be the recipient of a sulk; it means the other person respects and trusts us enough to think we should understand their unspoken hurt.

The possibility of an alternative love story is a reminder that the life we are leading is only one of a myriad of possible lives and it is the impossibility of leading them all that plunges us into sadness.