Alain de Botton
Alain de Botton
Alain de Botton, FRSLis a Swiss-born, British-based self-help philosopher and public speaker. His books and television programmes discuss various contemporary subjects and themes, emphasizing philosophy's relevance to everyday life. At 23, he published Essays in Love, which went on to sell two million copies. Other bestsellers include How Proust Can Change Your Life, Status Anxietyand The Architecture of Happiness...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth20 December 1969
moving journey ships
Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.
art world devotion
In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
writing self careers
Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.
people personality might
People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.
jobs work not-good-enough
A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
successful incentives littles
If one felt successful, there'd be so little incentive to be successful.
annoyed honour
You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you're annoyed with them.
real judgement intuition
Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.
bitterness
Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
art pain envy
No one is able to produce a great work of art without experience, nor achieve a worldly position immediately, nor be a great lover at the first attempt; and in the interval between initial failure and subsequent success, in the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation. We suffer because we cannot spontaneously master the ingredients of fulfillment.
tiny disappointing bigs
What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of disappointing others.
nice sunset daffodil
You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
doing-nothing exceed
Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.
friendship travel company-we-keep
Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others.