Quotes from Alain de Botton

Being put in our place by something larger, older, greater than ourselves is not a humiliation; it should be accepted as a relief from our insanely hopeful ambitions for our lives.

A feeling of beauty is a sign that we have come upon a material articulation of certain of our ideas of a good life.

It is according to how we are able to answer the question of what we do (normally the first enquiry we will have to field in any new acquaintance) that the quality of our reception is likely to be decided.

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

To appreciate life's small moments, it helps to have a sense the whole can never be made perfect.

The feeling one has no time to get anything done provides the pressure that guarantees one does get some things done.

An urgent wish is no guarantor of a sound solution.

Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.

Loneliness makes us more capable of true intimacy if ever better opportunities do come along. We might be isolated for now, but we'll be capable of far closer, more interesting bonds with anyone we do eventually locate. 

Romanticism is a philosophy of intuitive agreement. In real love, there is no need tiresomely to articulate or spell things out. When two people belong together, there is simply — at long last — a wondrous reciprocal feeling that both parties see the world in precisely the same way.

A sharp decline in actual deprivation may, paradoxically, have been accompanied by an ongoing and even escalating sense of fear of deprivation.

For many, the point of marriage isn't so much to be in love as to stop having to think of love.