The love of luxury breeds in societies where it feels very dangerous to be average.
Alain de Botton, Why We Continue to Love Expensive Things
The best cure for one's bad tendencies is to see them fully developed in someone else.
Alain de Botton, on Twitter
Something also needs to be said in praise of the ability to act without thinking every consequence through.
Alain de Botton, on Twitter
Aim to have a better grasp of your own awfulness than your worst enemy ever could.
Alain de Botton, on Twitter
We grow kinder to the extent that our own lives grow more susceptible to unkind interpretations.
Alain de Botton, on Twitter
Work begins when the fear of doing nothing at all finally trumps the terror of doing it badly.
Alain de Botton on Twitter
So easy to love people in memory: and so much more challenging when they are right there in front of you.
Alain de Botton on Twitter
Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
Alain de Botton, on Twitter
Writing: If I'm properly honest about what's going on in me, it should read like I know the secret parts of you.
Alain de Botton on Twitter
Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own - but that we could never have described on our own.
Alain de Botton, on Twitter
Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we're reading it at the right moment for us.
Alain de Botton, on Twitter
Better to run into accusations of hypocrisy down the line than to start with no high ideals whatsoever.
Alain de Botton, on Twitter
Much of life is about correctly determining on whom and on what we should finally give up.
Alain de Botton, on Twitter
'Wasting time' is usually terror, not laziness.
Alain de Botton, from Twitter
The most unbearable thing about many successful people is not -- as we flatteringly think -- how lazy they are, but how hard they work.
Alain de Botton, on Twitter
What masterpieces we'd have if writers accepted the need for daily practice and total sacrifice as the great athletes do.
Alain de Botton
Success demands the greatest, deepest capacity for unhappiness about what one has achieved to date.
Alain de Botton