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
love two world
Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.
art would-be world
A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which the consequences of our failures would necessarily cease to weigh upon us so heavily.
eye our-world would-be
It should not be Illiers-Combray that we visit: a genuine homage to Proust would be to look at our world through his eyes, not look at his world through our eyes.
numbness identity world
We don't exist unless there is someone who can see us existing, what we say has no meaning until someone can understand, while to be surrounded by friends is constantly to have our identity confirmed; their knowledge and care for us have the power to pull us from our numbness. In small comments, many of them teasing, they reveal they know our foibles and except them and so, in turn, accept that we have a place in the world.
world serious trouble
Much of the really serious trouble in the world gets going with a sense of humiliation.
contentment world morality
Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis of morality, or a sort of madness?
art imagination world
If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination.
art world devotion
In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
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.
real world cards
There is real danger of a disconnect between what's on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it's not a disconnect that the world is ready to be patient with.
world proust scene
When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.
believe thinking people
.. if you asked most people whether they believed in love or not, they’d probably say they didn’t. Yet that’s not necessarily what they truly think. It’s just the way they defend themselves against what they want. They believe in it, but pretend they don’t until they’re allowed to. Most people would throw away all their cynicism if they could. The majority just never gets the chance.
lonely book should
It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad, and to lonely service stations that we should drive when there is no one for us to hold or love.
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.