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One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.
Alain de Botton
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Alain de Botton
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Alone
Better
Good
Advanced
Ending
Capacity
Relationship
More quotes by Alain de Botton
Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.
Alain de Botton
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
There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.
Alain de Botton
The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren't there. The answers are there in the morning.
Alain de Botton
what we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistenly available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding onto. (p123) Architecture of Happiness
Alain de Botton
We need objects to remind us of the commitments we've made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side of ourselves we're in danger of losing touch with. Beautiful furniture gives us something to live up to. All designed objects are propaganda for a way of life.
Alain de Botton
Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
Alain de Botton
Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money.
Alain de Botton
I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or certainly the negative ones.
Alain de Botton
Choosing a spouse and a choosing career: the two great decisions for which society refuses to set up institutional guidance.
Alain de Botton
Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own - but that we could never have described on our own.
Alain de Botton
Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to have a successful life. Some of these suggestions are deeply unhelpful to our own projects and priorities - and we should take care.
Alain de Botton
We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy: they are our covert guides to what we should try to do next.
Alain de Botton
You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
Alain de Botton
The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.
Alain de Botton
Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.
Alain de Botton
The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness.
Alain de Botton
It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living it's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.
Alain de Botton
The real issue is not whether baking biscuits is meaningful, but the extent to which the activity can seem to be so after it has been continuously stretched and subdivided across five thousand lives.
Alain de Botton
Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.
Alain de Botton
