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Alain de Botton Biography

Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton, FRSL (/dəˈbɒtən/; born 20 December 1969) is a Swiss-born British philosopher and author. His books discuss various contemporary subjects and themes, emphasizing philosophy's relevance to everyday life. He published Essays in Love (1993), which went on to sell two million copies. Other bestsellers include How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997), Status Anxiety (2004) and The Architecture of Happiness (2006).

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Alain de Botton Quotes

We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame; just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.

Actually, Blame, Forgiving, Lose, Mood

Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.

Allowance, Conversation, Opportunity, Periods, Regret, Rhythm

The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.

People, Generosity, Envy, Competitiveness, Certain, Sensitivity

Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won't find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity. We throw a cordon of love around the chosen one and decide that everything within it will somehow be free of our faults. We locate inside another a perfection that eludes us within ourselves, and through our union with the beloved hope to maintain (against the evidence of all self-knowledge) a precarious faith in our species.

Elude Us, Eludes, Falling In Love, Hope, Involves, Self

Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.

Believe, Divorce, Person, Unhappy

The finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.

Finest, Loyalty, Monstrous, Proof

Must being in love always mean being in pain?

Being In Love, Love, Mean, Pain

It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes you hate humanity - but when you see people at their work they elicit respect, whether it's a mechanic, a stonemason or an accountant.

Beach, Hate, Humanity, Mechanic, People, Silly

Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.

Revenge, Victories, Victory, Way

Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.

Philosophy, Able, Hysterical, Convictions, Confidence, Disapproval

One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.

Grateful, Gratitude, Sight, Unfairly, Unhappiness

As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.

Keep, Matters, Record, Records, What Matters, Writing

We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire.

Believe, Face, Giving, Lives, Order

The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.

Play, Judgement, Identity, Attentions, See, Live

We don't really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped. . . We suffer, therefore we think.

Pain, Problem, Suffering, Think, Thinking

The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "luxury.

Age, Happiness, Luxury, Understanding, Views

Newspapers are being read all around. The point is not, of course, to glean new information, but rather to coax the mind out of its sleep-induced introspective temper.

Information, Mind, Point, Read, Sleep

According to one influential wing of modern secular society there are few more disreputable fates than to end up being 'like everyone else' for 'everyone else' is a category that comprises the mediocre and the conformist, the boring and the suburban. The goal of all right-thinking people should be to mark themselves off from the crowd and 'stand out' in whatever way their talents allow.

Everyone, Fate, Secular, Secular Society, Thinking, Wing

Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.

Capacity, Intimacy, Relationship, Weird

Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn't know rejection and humiliation so intimately.

Believe, Intimately, Invulnerable, Rejection, Sex

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