Alain de Botton

Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpredictable soil of medieval Europe, modern populations have nonetheless shown a remarkable capacity to feel that neither who they are nor what they have is quite enough.

The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren't there. The answers are there in the morning.

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

It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes you hate humanity - but when you see people at their work they elicit respect, whether it's a mechanic, a stonemason or an accountant.

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

Being put in our place by something larger, older, greater than ourselves is not a humiliation; it should be accepted as a relief from our insanely hopeful ambitions for our lives.

He [Wordsworth] invited his readers to abandon their usual perspective and to consider for a time how the world might look through other eyes, to shuttle between the human and the natural perspective. Why might this be interesting, or even inspiring? Perhaps because unhappiness can stem from only having one perspective to play with.

Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.

You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.

On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community we live in. We tend to become good or bad depending on the cues sent out within a particular space.

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

Marriage: a deeply peculiar and ultimately unkind thing to inflict on anyone one claims to care for.