Alain de Botton Quotes

I fell in love for the right reason. I fell in love unconditionally.

Being in love is all about the ability to give rather than take. It is not easy, but if you can accept this, then you will experience love.

In real love you want the other person's good. In romantic love you want the other person.

We're nothing if we're not loved. When you meet somebody who is more important to you than yourself, that has to be the most important thing.

There's a big difference between falling in love and being in love. There's a big difference between infatuation and falling in love.

I feel like love is the thing we were created for, yet it's the place we struggle the most.

For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

The romantic love we feel toward the opposite sex is probably one extra help from God to bring you together, but that's it. All the rest of it, the true love, is the test.

Love is an obsessive delusion that is cured by marriage.

The only way to real mature love is to get past the tropes of what we consider 'romance.'

Love to me, God, this is so difficult... To me, love is when you meet that person and you think, 'This is it, this is who I'm supposed to be with.'

Often we think love is a feeling: that you spontaneously experience it.

I don't know if love exists, not the kind that keeps. I think love's an infatuation that turns into a habit, because you can't keep that passion going. You get used to people, and that's death for me - I like to be surprised.

What does it matter how many lovers you have if none of them gives you the universe?

Luckily, no one I've ever been in love with has needed me to save their life!

Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.

Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.

We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.

The ever clearer consciousness that love can dispense with marriage, yet marriage cannot dispense with love, is already partially recognized by modern society, by the facility of divorce.

Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.

Love is when he gives you a piece of your soul, that you never knew was missing.

If you love a man, immediately you will reduce your intake of food - it's automatic.

Mature love is composed and sustaining; a celebration of commitment, companionship, and trust.

When you make the sacrifice in marriage, you're sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship.

I definitely don't think that money can buy you love. It can buy you affection but certainly not love.