Alain de Botton

Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.

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

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.

Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.

One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.

To one's enemies: "I hate myself more than you ever could.

We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.

Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand wh

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

What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.