Quote

I was uncomfortable writing fiction. My love was the personal essay rather than the novel.

Alain de Botton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alain de Botton
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Novel
Fiction
Personal
Rather
Writing
Love
Essay
Essays
Uncomfortable

More quotes by Alain de Botton

Image
According to Montaigne, it was the oppressive notion that we had complete mental control over our bodies, and the horror of departing from this portrait of normality, that had left the man unable to perform sexually.
Alain de Botton
Image
The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
Alain de Botton
Image
Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
Alain de Botton
Image
I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.
Alain de Botton
Image
Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.
Alain de Botton
Image
Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically teaches viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves.
Alain de Botton
Image
A lump rises in our throat at the sight of beauty from an implicit knowledge that the happiness it hints at is the exception.
Alain de Botton
Image
It would scarcely be acceptable, for example, to ask in the course of an ordinary conversation what our society holds to be the purpose of work.
Alain de Botton
Image
The best cure for one's bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.
Alain de Botton
Image
The good parent: someone who doesn't mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
Alain de Botton
Image
Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.
Alain de Botton
Image
What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
Alain de Botton
Image
The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.
Alain de Botton
Image
What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of disappointing others.
Alain de Botton
Image
We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.
Alain de Botton
Image
A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.
Alain de Botton
Image
Alcohol-inspired fights are a reminder of the price we pay for our daily submission at the altars of prudence and order.
Alain de Botton
Image
Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.
Alain de Botton
Image
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.
Alain de Botton
Image
An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths - by panicked shouting.
Alain de Botton