• Categories
  • Alain de Botton Quotes   372
  • In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water, the need for love hallucinates a prince or princess. The oasis complex is never a complete delusion: the man in the desert does see something on the horizon. It is just that the palms have withered, the well is dry, and the place is infected with locusts.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Love Quotes , Princess Quotes
  • The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust's therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Looks Quotes , May Quotes
  • We don't exist unless there is someone who can see us existing, what we say has no meaning until someone can understand, while to be surrounded by friends is constantly to have our identity confirmed; their knowledge and care for us have the power to pull us from our numbness. In small comments, many of them teasing, they reveal they know our foibles and except them and so, in turn, accept that we have a place in the world.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Numbness Quotes , Identity Quotes
  • We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Home Quotes , Mind Quotes
  • Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically teaches viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will; that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Sublime Quotes , Bows Quotes