Alain de Botton

"The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be."

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

"Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope."

"The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that."

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

"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."

"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."

"Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason."

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

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

"We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers... Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness..."

"If one felt successful, there'd be so little incentive to be successful."

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