Quotes from Alain de Botton

My father paid for my education; then he made it clear that I was on my own.

Parent and child may both love, but - unbeknown to the child - each party is on a different end of the axis. This is why, in adulthood, when we first long for 'love', what we mean is that we want to 'be loved' as we were once loved by a parent.

The solution as consumers is - perhaps surprisingly - to take adverts very, very seriously. We should ask ourselves what it is that we find lovely in them - the visions of friendship, togetherness, repose, or whatever. And then consider what would actually help us find these qualities in our lives.

All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.

I've had my successes and failures. I know many academics in my field loathe me. I've come to loathe them back, as it seems only polite to do so. But at heart it's absurd; we should band together against the big common enemies.

I'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.

There's something called religion, and it was invented a long time ago by people who felt very out of control with their lives, who didn't know... why the sun always rose over the mountains.

A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are.

When you look at the Moon, you think, "I'm really small. What are my problems?" It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.

The universe is large and we are tiny, without the need for further religious superstructure. One can have so-called spiritual moments without belief in the spirit.

It's perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it's perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two peoples who feel deeply humiliated by the other, who want the other to respect them. Battles over status can be even more intractable than those over land or water or oil.

I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.

We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.

I'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.

Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentially for reasons of status: for not showing them respect, for humiliating them.

What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.

Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.

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

The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.

One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.

Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.

One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.

There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.