Quotes by Alain de Botton

“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.”

“Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldnt find anyone to talk to”

“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”

“I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day-to-day take on things. The bare facts of life are utterly terrifying. And yet, one can laugh. Indeed, one has to laugh precisely because of the darkness: the nervous laughter of the trenches.”

“I passionately believe thats its not just what you say that counts, its also how you say it - that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.”

“Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.”

“Snobbery exists in all areas of life, not least literary criticism. By snobbery I mean, any method of judging someone or something whereby you latch on to one or two features about them/it, and use these to come to a definitive, immovable judgement. In intellectual matters, the snob will often take the external features of a work as a guide to its value.”

“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.”

“Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and youll be bombarded with suggestions of how to have a successful life. Some of these suggestions are deeply unhelpful to our own projects and priorities - and we should take care.”

“A kiss can be a comma, a question mark or an exclamation point. Thats basic spelling that every woman ought to know.”

One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.

There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.

Theres a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.

The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.

The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be.

The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true.

Far from rejecting outright any hierarchy of success or failure, philosophy instead reconfigures the judging process, lending legitimacy to theidea that themainstream value system may unfairly consign some people to disgrace and others to respectability.

We dont need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have mastered is the occasional capacity to acknowledge with good grace that we may, in one or two areas, be somewhat insane.

Ones doing well if age improves even slightly ones capacity to hold on to that vital truism: This too shall pass.

The media insists on taking what someone didnt mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.