Quotes from Alain de Botton

As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.

As Proust once said, classically beautiful women should be left to men without imagination.

The best cure for one's bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.

What is so frightening is the extent to which we may idealize others when we have such trouble tolerating ourselves

Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.

Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.

Dreams reveal we never quite get 'over' anything: it's all still in there somewhere.

A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.

It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value.

Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.

Our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.