Alain de Botton Quotes

Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.

To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.

A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.

Mental health: having enough safe places in your mind for your thoughts to settle.

The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.

Serious journalists often imagine society is adrift because people don't know certain things. Yet often, they know but just don't care. So the task of serious journalism isn't just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.

The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.