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
mind weight new-work
We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.
travel journey might
Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts.
wish agents would-be
Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.
ambition love-is missing
If it is true that love is the pursuit in another of qualities we lack in ourselves, then in our love of someone from another culture, one ambition may be to weld ourselves more closely to values missing from our own culture.
sports real school
I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at an English prep school. So the way to get round it was to become the school joker, which I did quite effectively - I was always fooling around to make the people who would otherwise dump me in the loo laugh.
careers two decision
Choosing a spouse and a choosing career: the two great decisions for which society refuses to set up institutional guidance.
kids thinking needs
We accept the need to train extensively to fly a plane; but think instinct should be enough for marrying and raising kids.
writing what-matters records
As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.
may obstacles financial
Happiness may be difficult to obtain. The obstacles are not primarily financial.
trying truthful destination
Being funny should be an incidental byproduct of trying to get to something truthful, not a destination in itself.
happiness success fall
Status Anxiety: A worry, so pernicious as to be capable of ruining extended stretches of our lives, that we are in danger of failing to conform to the ideals of success laid down by our society and that we may as a result be stripped of dignity and respect; a worry that we are currently occupying too modest a rung or are about to fall to a lower one.
spring events existence
Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.
successful years two
In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn't worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there's no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven't had a good time, "Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?"
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.