Quotes from Alain de Botton

And insofar as we travel in search of beauty, works of art may in small ways start to influence where we would like to travel to.

The distinctive mark of snobs is not simple discrimination, it is an insistence on a flawless equation between social rank and human worth.

religions understand that to belong to a community is both very desirable and not very easy.

Dragostea pare delimitat? de dou? disolu?ii - via?a sub prea multe priviri ?i via?a sub prea pu?ine.

Love is a trap and only reveals itself to us by making us suffer.

Love could not induce us to take on the burden of propagating the species without promising us the greatest happiness we could imagine.

Without envy, there could be no recognition of one's desires. So Symons gave Carol another ten-minute slot to list everyone she most regularly envied – adding on his way out of the room that he didn't care for niceness and that if there were not at least two names of close colleagues or friends on her piece of paper, he would know that she had been evasively sentimental.

disliking people rarely being a sufficient reason for not wanting them to like us).

we cannot help but ask what comes of all of this Ã¢â'¬Â¦ there is nothing to show but the satisfaction of hunger and sexual passion, and Ã¢â'¬Â¦ a little momentary gratification Ã¢â'¬Â¦ now and then, between Ã¢â'¬Â¦ endless needs and exertions.

But she's not even remotely coping inside: it takes a certain strength to cry, the confidence that one will eventually be able to staunch the tears.

Happiness is good for the body," Proust tells us, "but it is grief which develops the strengths of the mind.

He once fantasized that his worries would be stilled if he lived elsewhere, if he attained a few professional goals, if he had a family. But nothing has ever made a difference. He is, he can see, anxious to the core, in his most basic make-up: a frightened, ill-adjusted creature.

Tragedies remind us how badly we need to keep controlling ourselves by showing us what happens when people don

Aging is a bit like looking tired, but in a way that no amount of sleep will repair.

And if we were to show up at any college humanities department in urgent search of purpose and meaning, or were to break down in a museum gallery in a quest for forgiveness or charity, we would be swiftly removed and possibly handed over to psychiatric authorities. The intensity of need and the emotional craving that religions once willingly engaged with have not been thought acceptable within the contemporary cultural realm.

better off pursuing tormented love affairs than reading Plato or Spinoza.

Pronouncing a lover "perfect" can only be a sign that we have failed to understand them. We can claim to have begun to know someone only when they have substantially disappointed us.

Time abbreviated itself, like an accordion that is lived in extension but remembered only in contraction.

if we are prone to burst into tears after only a few harsh words about our character or achievements, it may be because the approval of others forms an essential part of our capacity to believe that we are right.

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

How are we affected by an absence of love? Why should being ignored drive us to a rage and impotent despair beside which torture itself would be a relief?- The Importance of Love

A few moments in the countryside overlooking a valley could number among the most significant and useful of one's life, and be as worthy of precise remembrance as a birthday or a wedding.

It may be a sign that two people have stopped loving one another (or at least stopped wishing to make the effort that constitutes ninety per cent of love) when they are no longer able to spin differences into jokes. Humour lined the walls of irritation between our ideals and the reality: behind every joke, there was a warning of difference, of disappointment even, but it was a difference that had been defused - and could therefore be passed over without the need for a pogrom.

What use was it to live if it was without love and without being heard? What was freedom if it meant the freedom to be abandoned?