Alain de Botton Quotes

Here's what I think I'm having trouble with: this is what happiness is. When I was a kid, I thought I'd just get happier and happier as I got older, and have more things to be happy about. I based this theory on observation of select adults. The problem with my results is that I couldn't tell the difference then between happy and fake-happy. Now I know you pretend to be just frigging ecstatic over everything, maybe because you're so glad it's not worse.

No matter how many possessions we acquire, they will not provide us with any lasting happiness and freedom. On the contrary, it is often our pursuit of material possessions that causes our problems. If we want ultimate happiness and freedom from suffering, we must engage in the supreme practices of training the mind. There is no other way.

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.

I am beginning to believe that nothing can ever be proved. These are honest hypotheses which take the facts into account: but I sense so definitely that they come from me, and that they are simply a way of unifying my own knowledge. Not a glimmer comes from Rollebon's side. Slow, lazy, sulky, the facts adapt themselves to the rigour of the order I wish to give them; but it remains outside of them. I have the feeling of doing a work of pure imagination.

I'm not a part of any organized practices, but I believe heavily on love and the universe and what you give is what you get.

God is at work in all the circumstances of your life to bring out the good for you, even if you had never heard of Romans 8:28. His work is not dependent upon your faith. But the comfort and joy that statement is intended to give you is dependent upon your believing it, upon your trusting in Him who is at work, even though you cannot see the outcome of that work.

Nothing out there will ever satisfy you except temporarily and superficially, but you may need to experience many disappointments before you realize that truth

the real mission you have in life is to make yourself happy, and in order to be happy, you have to look at what you believe, the way you judge yourself, the way you victimize yourself

And as a Christian, I got something the world didn't give me, the world can't take away, so I find joy that can never be reduced to anything.

The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have the more free you are. Poverty for us is a freedom. It is not mortification, a penance. It is joyful freedom. There is no television here, no this, no that. But we are perfectly happy.

Sometimes we get wrong notions, we think we have to be in a luxurious house, in a large city, with a new car in order to be happy. Happiness isn't there. Happiness isn't in a new car, it isn't in a new and luxurious apartment. Happiness isn't in banks and stocks. Happiness is where you make it, it's up to you. It comes from within, it doesn't come from things.

You cannot possess all and everything. Whatsoever you possess will not give you contentment. The mind, the ego, will always feel unfulfilled.

You can only hear clearly when you sit quietly, when you give your attention. Nor can you have order if you are not free to watch, if you are not free to listen, if you are not free to be considerate. This problem of freedom and order is one of the most difficult and urgent problems in life. It is a very complex problem. It needs to be thought over much more than mathematics, geography, or history.

You may get an emotional thrill when you first buy something, but emotions are fickle. You buy that one thing you think will complete your happiness, but after awhile the feeling goes away and you have to go to the next thing. You just keep going from purchase to purchase looking for the one thing that will finally satisfy. But stuff can't satisfy.

There is no such thing as real happiness in life. The justest definition that was ever given of it was "a tranquil acquiescence under an agreeable delusion"--I forget where.

Every one is well or ill at ease, according as he finds himself! not he whom the world believes, but he who believes himself to be so, is content; and in him alone belief gives itself being and reality

I still feel the need of some imperishable bliss.

"Pursuit of happiness" implies that we're running after happiness and happiness is running away from us. It also implies that happiness is somewhere out there, in material goods, which we have to pursue, whereas I believe that it is an illusion happiness is not out there, it is within us.

After you read the script, then you actually just have to be in the moment you're in, in order to make it believable. You can't give it away. You can't tip it off. For me, it's always about being truthful in the moment I'm in. Hopefully, being able to reveal what I'm feeling, you have to believe it.

Honestly, I have come to believe that everything is in the order it's in for a reason. I am happy with who I am today.

You have to give to the world the thing that you want the most, in order to fix the broken parts inside you.

The universe is wired to give us what we need, yet we have to show up for the experience of life with a positive attitude in order to experience its gifts.

Laughter is eternity if joy is real.