Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom we know nothing. Romances are never as pure as those we imagine during long train journeys, as we secretly contemplate a beautiful person who is gazing out of the window – a perfect love story interrupted only when the beloved looks back into the carriage and starts up a dull conversation about the excessive price of the on-board sandwiches with a neighbour or blows her nose aggressively into a handkerchief.
Alain de BottonI'm also interested in the modern suggestion that you can have a combination of love and sex in a marriage - which no previous society has ever believed.
Alain de BottonRather than saying 'I hate mess', it might draw more compassion to say, 'mess terrifies me as a harbinger of catastrophe'.
Alain de BottonTravel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.
Alain de Botton