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
god soul world
The secular world is full of holes. We have secularized badly.
god spiritual religious
It's as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you're living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.
god spiritual religious
The universe is large and we are tiny, without the need for further religious superstructure. One can have so-called spiritual moments without belief in the spirit.
god soul trying
We may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they're doing it.
god religious intelligent
Religions are so subtle, so complicated, so intelligent in many ways that they're not fit to be abandoned to the religious alone; they're for all of us.
believe god-love bachs-music
Although I don't believe in God, Bach's music shows me what a love of God must feel like.
disgusted finally nature totally wasteful
I waste most of the day, then finally start to write around 3 P.M., totally disgusted with myself for my wasteful nature.
meeting run sit
When I'm writing, I write all day. Other days, I sit around thinking. Or I run around from one meeting to another, out in the world. It varies, and I like that.
bad concepts describe good heaven hell invented virtue
Virtue is its own reward. We only invented concepts like heaven and hell to describe how we feel. We don't feel good doing bad and it's nice to help someone.
kids might
I was a very un-literary child, which might reassure parents with kids who don't read.
somebody time unlimited
I always feel that I am writing for somebody who is bright but impatient. Someone who doesn't have unlimited time. That is my sense of the reader. So I have got to get to the point.
education paid
My father paid for my education; then he made it clear that I was on my own.
beloved children pads plenty
I keep a picture of my beloved children close by. Also, water and plenty of pads and pens.
bothers creating emphasis encounter food gathering meeting rather successful whereas whether
What bothers me is that there is so much emphasis on food, rather than gathering and meeting - so that there is all this effort in creating the right food, whereas the food is only a small part of whether the encounter is successful or not.