Alain de Botton Quotes

Then everyone leaves, and you are left, each night, to your own devices with a crowd of interesting people - most of whom you don't know - sitting in the dark.

I like being alone and I think this movie, as much as it is an investigation of connection and people bonding, I also think it's just as much about loneliness.

I want to be around people, not crickets.

I can go days without meaningful human interaction.

Maybe we had just gotten too used to being alone-- and maybe that needed to change.

Liam really enjoyed a good movie. He found it restful to watch people's conversations without being expected to join in. But he always felt sort of lonesome if he didn't have someone next to him to nudge in the ribs at the good parts.

Alone, lonely people talk to themselves. In company, they often continue.

When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell a story: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends. You let events flow by too: you suddenly see people appear who speak and then go away; you plunge into stories of which you can't make head or tail: you'd make a terrible witness.

I'd known enough people for every minute of the day, and yet still didn't have anyone as my two a.m.

So often in my life I've been with people and shared beautiful moments like travelling or staying up all night and watching the sunrise, and I knew it was a special moment, but something was always wrong. I wished I'd been with someone else. I knew that what I was feeling - exactly what was so important to me - they didn't understand.

Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.

Disaffection stalks around us.

I guess I'm pretty much of a lone wolf. I don't say I don't like people at all, but, to tell you the truth, I only like it then if I have a chance to look deep into their hearts and their minds.

If loneliness is part of our essence, that is, our essential nature, that is only because of the way, in practical terms, we actually exist; that is, the way we move and work and live in the world.

I never spent much time with people my own age.

If there is a look of human eyes that tells of perpetual loneliness, so there is also the familiar look that is the sign of perpetual crowds.

A man by himself is in bad company.

Solitude is pleasant. Loneliness is not.

Friends and relatives might be surprised that I think of myself as lonely. I'm married to a man I not only love but like, and we spend a lot of time together. If I feel like socializing, I can usually find someone to meet for coffee or a drink.

The interesting thing is why we're so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness.

If you're a misanthrope you stay at home. There are certain writers who really don't like other people. I'm not like that, I don't think.

I don't worry anymore about where's the big hangout Tuesday night, Friday. Couldn't tell you and no one comes to me for advice anymore in those areas anymore, so real boring I would say.

I'm perpetually lonely.

I have many good friends, but I tend to keep to myself anyway. It's odd, doing things and having no one to share them with.

There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.