Alain de Botton Quotes about Love

All Alain de Botton Quotes Achievement Age Ambition Anxiety Art Atheist Awareness Belief Bitterness Blame Challenges Children Choices Curiosity Desire Destiny Difficulty Dignity Envy Expectations Falling In Love Feelings Frustration Giving Giving Up God Gratitude Happiness Hate Heart Home Identity Inspiration Journey Joy Literature Losing Love quotes Lying Memories Motivation Optimism Pain Painting Personality Perspective Philosophy Proust Purpose Quality Reality Sadness Soul Suffering Travel Understanding Weakness Worry Writing

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.

Alain de Botton

Love, Two, Adults

Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.5, Vintage

In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water, the need for love hallucinates a prince or princess. The oasis complex is never a complete delusion: the man in the desert does see something on the horizon. It is just that the palms have withered, the well is dry, and the place is infected with locusts.

Alain de Botton

Love, Princess, Men

Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.52, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.

Alain de Botton

Love, Two, People

According to Montaigne, it was the oppressive notion that we had complete mental control over our bodies, and the horror of departing from this portrait of normality, that had left the man unable to perform sexually.

Alain de Botton

Love, Men, Portraits