Quotes from Alain de Botton

There are few more effective ways to promote tolerance between suspicious neighbours than to force them to eat supper together.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the public's relationship to art has been weakened by a profound institutional reluctance to address the question of what art is for. This is a question that has, quite unfairly, come to feel impatient, illegitimate, and a little impudent.

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

We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich people, we will start to think that to be beautiful and rich is very important - just as in the Middle Ages, people were surrounded by images of religious piety.

I went to church and couldn't swallow it. The music was nice but I don't belong there.

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

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

The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that.

Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere - and I really don't get on with machismo. I'm interested in sensitivity and weakness and fear and anxiety because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that's what we are.

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.

The number one person who needs my books is me. I'm not some sort of disinterested guru who has worked life out and is handing things out to the poor people who might not have life worked out.

Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentially for reasons of status: for not showing them respect, for humiliating them.

We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.

The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.

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

In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.

Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.

You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.

One of the most welcome aspects of office work is that you do not need to be fully yourself.

I'm not an academic philosopher, and don't agree with the way the universities approach the subject. I'm a philosopher only in the very loose sense of someone interested in wisdom and well-being attained through reason. But I'm as interested in psychoanalysis and art as I am in philosophy.

I've tried to write about Heathrow before and been escorted off the premises.

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 think it is very possible that my deeper character is not very English.

The central task for a business is to make a profit. The challenge is to make a profit by doing things which are genuinely good for people and good for societies.