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
smartphones interesting challenges
The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.
thinking opposites anxiety
Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don't get on with machismo. I'm interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that's what we are.
despair events surrender
Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.
beautiful sleep thinking
Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
good-relationship capacity
One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.
thinking return different
Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.
fighting balance work-and-life
There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
forgiving blame mood
We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame; just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.
beautiful falling-in-love blow
Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom we know nothing. Romances are never as pure as those we imagine during long train journeys, as we secretly contemplate a beautiful person who is gazing out of the window – a perfect love story interrupted only when the beloved looks back into the carriage and starts up a dull conversation about the excessive price of the on-board sandwiches with a neighbour or blows her nose aggressively into a handkerchief.
real may tests
Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.
years lasts enough
Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.