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Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.


Alain de Botton

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people dont know you till they meet you. dont smile if you dont want to, dont be a false person, don...
CAROLINA JANETTE GOMEZ GONZALEZ You cant be in a position where you dont know what you are going to do next.
ERIC GREEN People dont care what you know until they know what you care
JOHN C. MAXWELL You cant live champagne life,if you cant buy beer.
I DONT KNOW It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Dont GiVe UP iF U StIll WaNna TrY*
DonT WIpE YOUR TeARS IF YOU StiLL WANT TO Cry
 DON'T SET...
TRENT REZNOR When you try to talk about yourself, you dont know who you are, or what your like, or what your like...
CAROL CHANNING Dont try to go too fast. Learn your job. Dont ever talk until you know what youre talking about. If ...
SAM RAYBURN Sometimes you dont even want to think aout what people are doing with their groceries.
SARAH DESSEN i dont like when people say you know when they are in the middle of telling you something to me it g...
DALLY SALAD You should be convinced of the authenticity of what you have, but you must also be humble enough to ...
MITCH ALBOM I dont know what happens to country.
CORMAC MCCARTHY When the sun sets do not despair; hope sits with you in the dark.
MATSHONA DHLIWAYO You're beautifulIt's trueI saw your face In a crowded placeand I dont know what to docause I will ne...
JAMES BLUNT You walk between gods and men. Your choices are only between despair and hope!
GREG KEYES You cant find outside what you dont have inside.
CARL HAMMERSCHLAG If we dont error then how are we gonna know what needs to be repaired.If we dont get angry then how ...
MICHAEL STRONG Hey, techer leave those kids alone!.....We dont need no education......we dont need no thought contr...
PINK FLOYD For tho' we know what we ought to be; & what it would be very sweet & beautiful to be; yet w...
HERMAN MELVILLE We dont know what were going to go home to, ... If we dont have anything anymore, Im not sure I want...
IAN WILLIAMSON If you dont get what you want,you wont want what you get.
KENNETH ELLIOTT HUDSON La façon dont tu traites les autres est un reflet direct de la façon dont tu te sens envers toi-m�...
PAULOT COELHO And remember: you must never, under any circumstances, despair. To hope and to act, these are our du...
BORIS PASTERNAK With optimism, you look upon the sunny side of things. People say, 'Studs, you're an optimis...
STUDS TERKEL I say I dont sleep with married men, but what I mean is that I dont sleep with happily married men.
BRITT EKLAND The moment you lose hope, the only thing left in your hands is despair
MARIE MUHAMMAD Things happen to you they happen. They dont ask first. They dont require your permission.
CORMAC MCCARTHY Its much more easier to know just one thing about everything in this universe than to know everythin...
OJAS VISHWAKARMA True love is you. You cant love someone else if you dont love yourself.. Get to know yourself.
NERISSA IRVING I have faced many moments of despair, thank God who relieved me from distress.
LAILAH GIFTY AKITA Life is cold, but I will put on my clothes and wear my shoes
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Embrace life with hope than despair.
LAILAH GIFTY AKITA People dont see you for what you think, they see you for what you say
SIMPLETON Never despair, but if you do, work in despair
EDMUND BURKE Ever feel like everything is just moving to fast,and you just dont know how to keep up
NADIRA AHMED And if you dont believe the sun will rise, stand alone and greet the coming night in the last remain...
CHRIS CORNELL I just dont know how...to think less. If you know how, then teach me...
AISHAH MADADIY The diffrence in man kind is you do or dont.
JAYDON Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair
EDMUND BURKE Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.
EDMUND BURKE Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.
EDMUND BURKE Never lose hope.
Never lose faith.
LAILAH GIFTY AKITA Everyone hears what you say, Friends listen to what you say, Best friends listen to what you dont sa...
PROVERB O yes youwl want to think on that you dont want your mouf to walk you where your feet dont want to g...
RUSSELL HOBAN But hope, I can tell you, is an exhausting emotion; perhaps, along with fear, the most exhausting of...
SAM TAYLOR And kid Congress and the Senate, dont scold em. They are just children thats never grown up. They do...
WILL ROGERS With out passion you dont have energy, with out energy you have nothing.
DONALD TRUMP If you start in the pit of despair with these profane, awful things, even a glimmer of hope or aware...
CHUCK PALAHNIUK Dont let the love control your heart without letting your brain get in the middle or you will lose m...
SAD LOVE ANGEL You have more to fear from those who think they know you,Than from those who know they dont.
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. You dont know your wearing a leash if you sit by the peg all day.
MICHAEL PARENTI Apocalypse is a frame of mind." [Nicodemus] said then. "A belief. A surrender to inevitability. It i...
JIM BUTCHER What people dont know about you people create. Imagination is a part of being human. They fill in th...
R.M. ENGELHARDT (TALON) When you're in a Slump,
you're not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easil...
DR. SEUSS Nothing gets easy. It is just that you understand how it is and how it works. Nothing its difficult ...
DE PHILOSOPHER DJ KYOS Eat cheese and do a u-turn but if you dont like cheese dont eat cheese and do a u-turn
KATIE BAVISTER In all things it is better to hope than to despair.
JOHANN VON GOETHE In all things it is better to hope than to despair
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE People think that they are untouchable, but you will probably find that there lives are built around...
GARY F EVANS... Its very beautiful over there. I dont know where there is, but I believe its somewhere, and I hope i...
THOMAS EDISON GUERRERO BARBOSA Keep running; keep dreaming, keep alive the flame of hope; defeat and despair will not catch up with...
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA Love is a stranger and dont Live here,, and it dont even Visit
KALUM JOHNSON (KDOG) You're beautiful
It's true
I saw your face
In a crowded place
and I dont know what ...
JAMES BLUNT Dont look back in anger, I heard you say...
OASIS In heartbreak and despair, I see strength and hope.
SCOTTIE SOMERS (With people) if you want to save time, dont be efficient. With people, slow is fast and fast is slo...
STEPHEN COVEY If it doesnt help, I damned sure dont know what will.
JACK MOORE I dont know that happened.
DAVID BERNSTEIN It's so different and it's hard to readapt. Whole new classes and you dont' know where you're going.
JENNY SMITH How can someone ask you to show your full potential when their actions bring out the worst in you.Fo...
TANICA S HALL You dont have to live forever just live.
NATALIE BABBITT do tou think i would speak for you? i dont even know your language
JUDD NELSON I alternate between hope and despair,
A. JOHNSON What we call despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
GEORGE ELIOT if u know how to use your mind , you dont need a million bucks to make you feel like your in paradis...
ELVIS HODZIC A university professor set an examination question in which he asked what is the difference between ...
RICHARD PRATT My only hope lies in my despair.
JEAN RACINE My only hope lies in my despair.
JEAN BAPTISTE RACINE Like strength is felt from hope, and from despair.
HOMER ("SMYRNS OF CHIOS") I don't want to know that you don't want me. I don't want to know what you do without me. I don't wa...
SARA QUIN I might look successful and happy being in front of you today, but I once suffered from severe depre...
JI-HAE PARK Every time you say you dont believe in fairies, a fairy dies.
PETER PAN Anything that you dont overcome will eventualy overtake you.
MICHAEL STRONG Madness does not always howl. Sometimes, it is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "Hey, i...
DESPAIR INC. You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday dont count. But yesterday is all that does count....
CORMAC MCCARTHY you know people seriously only deciding according to their needs and remember they dont a fuck to yo...
FAAMIN If you dont know learn how to be scared, you'll never really learn how to be brave.
SIMON HOLT Sometimes the best experiences are days when you u dont do anything...
EULLYS "JEWELZ" HINNANT III Life is cold; I will put on my clothes and wear my shoes
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH What you don’t understand you cannot treasure
SUNDAY ADELAJA We think you are a total waste of human flesh. And you know what, Charles Cullen? God agrees with us...
WALTER HENNE Demand your respect. Know what you want out of a man so he can manifest and become it... But that wo...
NERISSA IRVING If you can control a mans thinking, you dont have to worry about his actions. If you can determine w...
CARTER WOODSON You are a delicate as a flower, One little thing can break you, so dont let anything come in the way...
DANIELLE D What we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
GEORGE ELIOT Instead of dwelling and being upset over something you dont have, appreciate and accept what you do ...
BRANDON HOFER Thus repuls'd, our final hope Is flat despair.
JOHN MILTON We are humiliated by what is powerful and mean, but awed by what is powerful and noble.
ALAIN DE BOTTON You can say that you dont care what anyone thinks about you, but in the end, its all that really mat...
TIFFANY GARLAND Don't lie to yourself?
SONYA.E.WILLIAMS

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ALAIN DE BOTTON Atheism is having a heyday in the born-again United States.
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ALAIN DE BOTTON Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuou...
ALAIN DE BOTTON One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.
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ALAIN DE BOTTON In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn
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ALAIN DE BOTTON He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is c...
ALAIN DE BOTTON At the top of the slope on the perimeter of the site, overlooking six lanes of motorway, is a diner ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I was an incredibly lonely, very alienated teenager.
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ALAIN DE BOTTON It's almost a blessing when we meet people who naturally want to do the sort of things that are ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes yo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Small issues are really just large ones that haven't been accorded the requisite attention.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Fantasies can be great, but we shouldn't make the wedding a fantasy, because the wedding is the ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Most of the time, we make discoveries about how difficult people are at the moment when the difficul...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The thing is that love gives us a ringside seat on somebody else's flaws, so of course you'r...
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ALAIN DE BOTTON Laughter is an important part of a good relationship. It's an immense achievement when you can m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "lu...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We tend to think of philosophies as produced by professional philosophers. Traditionally, this has m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The romantic person instinctively sees marriage in terms of emotions, but what a couple actually get...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
ALAIN DE BOTTON What makes people good communicators is, in essence, an ability not to be fazed by the more problema...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which th...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Parents don't reveal how often they have bitten their tongue, fought back the tears, or been too...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The humanities have been forced to disguise, both from themselves and their students, why their subj...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I assemble my ideas in pieces on a computer file, then gradually find a place for them on a piece of...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Sometimes my biography is interpreted as the upbringing of a French aristocrat. It was very, very di...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
ALAIN DE BOTTON The more people you have to ask for permission, the more dangerous a project gets.
ALAIN DE BOTTON What annoys me about most self-help books is that they have no tragic sense. They have no sense that...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
ALAIN DE BOTTON The start receives such disproportionate attention because it isn't deemed to be just one phase amon...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
ALAIN DE BOTTON If you are pro love, you have to be a little bit disloyal to the romantic feelings that propel you i...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The number one person who needs my books is me. I'm not some sort of disinterested guru who has ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Parents become very good at not hearing the explicit words and listening instead to what the child m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Secular thinkers have a separation between thinking and doing. They don't have a grasp of the ba...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I waste most of the day, then finally start to write around 3 P.M., totally disgusted with myself fo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We have to put aside the customary historical reading of works of art in order to invite art to resp...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I remember going to university, and the people who'd left home for the first time looked at the ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Everyone's more vulnerable than they seem, and I think men are more vulnerable. Once you get clo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON At 'The School of Life', we take seriously anything that has to do with human fulfilment - a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A city like London is sociable in a sense that there are people gathering in bars and restaurants, c...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON As for despair, it comes about when I have been a fool and hate myself and despair of my personality...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Therapy and counseling can do wonderful things for people. But they have emerged so far as what are ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The idea that one might use art for 'instrumental' reasons tends to set off alarm bells at t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are never through with the requirement for acceptance. This isn't a curse limited to the inadequa...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentia...
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ALAIN DE BOTTON I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day-to-day take on things. The bare fa...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich peo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two p...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Katie Price is no exception. She, too, is - in a distinctive way - a philosopher. Partially, Katie P...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Used to do a lot of falling in love with people, almost in the street, and imagining that there woul...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Le Corbusier is an outstanding writer. His ideas achieved their impact in large measure because he c...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Since the beginning of the 20th century, the public's relationship to art has been weakened by a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There's a certain kind of insular, old-fashioned, upper-class Britishness that gives me the spoo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON After Carol had left, as Symons threw away a pile of used tissues and rearranged the cushions on the...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I've had my successes and failures. I know many academics in my field loathe me. I've come t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere - and I really don't get on with mach...
ALAIN DE BOTTON For thousands of years, it had been nature--and its supposed creator--that had had a monopoly on awe...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom
we know nothing. Romances...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A person cannot be at once a libertine and a married Romantic, however compelling both paradigms mig...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the inferiors of the virgin land they have repla...
ALAIN DE BOTTON What we typically call love is only the start of love. Our understanding of love has been hijacked a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON On account of its scale and complexity, the world will always outstrip the capacity of any single bo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writer...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Emotional life is - alongside work - one of the great challenges of existence and is a theme that I ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once (we soon feel ungrateful) or tho...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were w...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There are few more effective ways to promote tolerance between suspicious neighbours than to force t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There's a constant tension between the excitement of new people and security with one person. If...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never sav...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There is no one more likely to destroy us than the person we marry.
ALAIN DE BOTTON The challenge lies in knowing how to bring this sort of day to a close. His mind has been wound to a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Many people in the intellectual elite are very scared of shouting. They insist on very quiet murmurs...
ALAIN DE BOTTON as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status an...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Far from rejecting outright any hierarchy of success or failure, philosophy instead reconfigures the...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is according to how we are able to answer the question of what we do (normally the first enquiry ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the statu...
ALAIN DE BOTTON People who hold important positions in society are commonly labelled "somebodies," and their inverse...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answe...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There is a danger of developing a blanket distaste for modern life which could have its attractions ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire li...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
ALAIN DE BOTTON When does a job feel meaningful? Whenever it allows us to generate delight or reduce suffering in ot...
ALAIN DE BOTTON One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A good half of the art of living is resilience.
ALAIN DE BOTTON ...workplace dynamics are no less complicated or unexpectedly intense than family relations, with on...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are humiliated by what is powerful and mean, but awed by what is powerful and noble.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Literature has always had its circus side, its freaks and its frivolities - and maybe that's all par...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I love the idea of a university as away from capitalist values, where people can do things that don&...
ALAIN DE BOTTON What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent techno...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is one of the unexpected disasters of the modern age that our new unparalleled access to informat...
ALAIN DE BOTTON In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Blind impatience is equally evident in the fruit section. Our ancestors might have delighted in the ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t al...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who w...
ALAIN DE BOTTON In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Snobbery exists in all areas of life, not least literary criticism. By snobbery I mean, any method o...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to h...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I've tried to write about Heathrow before and been escorted off the premises.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Because I have this thing about birthdays--they always remind me of death and forced jollity.
ALAIN DE BOTTON He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on p...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The feeling one has no time to get anything done provides the pressure that guarantees one does get ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I'm fascinated by Comte's clear-eyed analysis of what was wrong with modern society, which i...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The most courageous act in politics is to try to understand your opponent.
ALAIN DE BOTTON The idea of a book that can make a change to your life, that can affect your perspective, is a beaut...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The philosophy I love is very selective. It is really just the bit that is involved in a search for ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is hope--with regard to our careers, our love lives, our children, our politicians, and our plane...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actu...
ALAIN DE BOTTON He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity--suggesting that a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There are books that speak to us of our own lives with a clarity we cannot match. They prevent the m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Travel is a lot like love.
ALAIN DE BOTTON What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
ALAIN DE BOTTON I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Learning to give up on perfection may be just about the most romantic move any of us could make.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Work is a way of bringing order to chaos, and there's a basic satisfaction in seeing that we are...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I like working with people. I believe change can only come through collaboration.
ALAIN DE BOTTON I see religion as a storehouse of lots of really good ideas that a secular world should look at, rai...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Rather than getting more spoilt with age, as difficulties pile up, epiphanies of gratitude abound.
ALAIN DE BOTTON For the rest of history, for most of us, our bright promise will always fall short of being actualis...
ALAIN DE BOTTON In 'Art as Therapy', we argue that art is a tool that can variously help to inspire, console...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I was a very un-literary child, which might reassure parents with kids who don't read.
ALAIN DE BOTTON In our more arrogant moments, the sin of pride—or superbia, in Augustine's Latin formulation—tak...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Partially undermining the manufacturer's ability to assert that its work constituted a meaningful co...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis o...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The solution as consumers is - perhaps surprisingly - to take adverts very, very seriously. We shoul...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We don't need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humani...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I think of myself as quite a shy person. But when I'm curious about something, I'll go quite...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Artworks are especially good at helping our psyches in a variety of ways: they rebalance our moods, ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON [T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister th...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Whatever modern democracies may tell themselves about their commitment to free speech and to diversi...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing coun...
ALAIN DE BOTTON To be loved by someone is to realize how much they share the same needs that lie at the heart of our...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as beautiful, intelligent, and...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
ALAIN DE BOTTON A storyteller who provided us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortu...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the const...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpre...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Even if our loved ones have assured us that they will be busy at work, even if they told us they hat...
ALAIN DE BOTTON You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneven...
ALAIN DE BOTTON What a peculiar civilisation this was: inordinately rich, yet inclined to accrue its wealth through ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as in...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We would like to go and see the field that Millet…shows us in his Springtime, we would like Claude...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Our feelings of anxiety are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss, and so need to be ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for maki...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we c...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Nature puts us all in our places. Being made to feel small isn't something we welcome when it's done...
ALAIN DE BOTTON in Flaubert’s eyes, that only entirely illiterate and uneducated Frenchmen now stood a chance of b...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A clean conscience is the preserve of those without sufficient imagination.
ALAIN DE BOTTON In the past, Flaubert implied, idiots had had no clue as to what the carbon structure of diamonds wa...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
ALAIN DE BOTTON But we would do well to meditate daily, rather as the religious do on their God, on the 9.5 trillion...
ALAIN DE BOTTON To a shameful extent, the charm of marriage boils down to how unpleasant it is to be alone. This isn...
ALAIN DE BOTTON One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
ALAIN DE BOTTON What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books written bec...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Unrequited love may be painful, but it is safely painful, because it does not involve inflicting dam...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Jarenlang kwam ik bij het boodschappen doen langs een huis dat weliswaar een van de lelijkste gebouw...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Snobbery exists in all areas of life, not least literary criticism. By snobbery I mean, any method o...
ALAIN BOTTON Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writer...
ALAIN BOTTON I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - tha...
ALAIN BOTTON I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day-to-day take on things. The bare fa...
ALAIN BOTTON