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 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.
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.
morning thinking mind
The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren't there. The answers are there in the morning.
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.
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.
beautiful should embarrassed
We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
book asking kind
One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?
successful incentives littles
If one felt successful, there'd be so little incentive to be successful.
home mind important
We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.
essence alive speak
Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.
worry anxiety enjoy-life
Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.
philosophy sadness writing
The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that.
people waiting humiliation
All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.
people tendencies unfortunate
Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.