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
falling-in-love health fall
One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.
writing sane
My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.
thinking disrespect gazing
Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as 'doing nothing'.
beautiful film cry
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.
depressing mean expectations
He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.
atheist people priorities
It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings in the darkness which religions have explored. This is a particular priority for secular Americans, perhaps the most anxious and disappointed people on earth, for their nation infuses them with the most extreme hopes about what they may be able to achieve in their working lives and relationships.
children parent mind
The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
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.
love two people
The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.