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
luxury views understanding
The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "luxury.
views quality world
We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.
love-is views names
To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.
home sky weather
We are sad at home and blame the weather and the ugliness of the buildings, but on the tropical island we learn that the state of the skies and the appearance of our dwellings can never on their own underwrite our joy nor condemn us to misery.
mistake degrees imagine
The degree of sympathy we feel regarding another's fiasco is directly proportional to how easy or difficult it is for us to imagine ourselves, under like circumstances, making a similar mistake.
mean media
The media insists on taking what someone didn't mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.
practice play violin
Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
destiny stronger longing
The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
falling-in-love lying believe
If cynicism and love lie at opposite ends of a spectrum, do we not sometimes fall in love in order to escape the debilitating cynicism to which we are prone? Is there not in every coup de foudre a certain willful exaggeration of the qualities of the beloved, an exaggeration which distracts us from our habitual pessimism and focuses our energies on someone in whom we can believe in a way we have never believed in ourselves?
nightmare
Never, ever become a writer. It's a nightmare.
believe divorce unhappy
Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.
glasses understanding hurtful
The lesson? To respond to the unexpected and hurtful behavior of others with something more than a wipe of the glasses, to see it as a chance to expand our understanding.
stupid ideas people
The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.
smell light childhood
Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.