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
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.
travel useless necklaces
A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.
travel giving wish
A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.
friendship travel company-we-keep
Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others.
travel journey mindset
The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.
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.
depression despair fool hate prone
As for despair, it comes about when I have been a fool and hate myself and despair of my personality. I am prone to gloom, but not depression as such.