31 Quotes by Alain de Botton
Alain de Botton is a Swiss-British philosopher, writer, and television presenter who explores the complexities of modern life in a relatable and accessible way. He has written extensively on topics such as love, work, travel, and architecture, using philosophy as a tool for understanding and improving our daily lives. De Botton’s works are notable for their clarity and wit, and his ability to make complex ideas accessible to a broad audience. He has also founded The School of Life, an organization that offers classes, workshops, and resources aimed at fostering emotional intelligence and self-improvement. (Bio)
Alain de Botton Quotes
Compatibility is an achievement of love; it shouldn’t be its precondition. (Meaning)
The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.
There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.
Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone – and finding that that’s ok with them.
The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.
Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
A good half of the art of living is resilience.
Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.
Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things
Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.
Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
Mental health: having enough safe places in your mind for your thoughts to settle.
Envy: a confused, tangled guide to one’s own ambitions.
Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.
We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.
The best cure for one’s bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.
True love is a lack of desire to check one’s smartphone in another’s presence.
It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.
Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.
A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.
Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.
Unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.
Not everyone is worth listening to.
Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.
The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
If you’re understood in maybe, I don’t know, 60% of your soul by your partner, that’s fantastic. Don’t expect that it’s going to be 100%. Of course you will be lonely. (Meaning)
― Alain de Botton Quotes
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Tal Gur is an impact-driven creator at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 life goals around the globe. Tal's journey and recent book, The Art of Fully Living, inspired him to found Elevate Society.
