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Alain De Bottonauthor profile |
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| born | December 20, 1969 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| gender | male | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| place of birth | Switzerland | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| website | http://www.alaindebotton.com | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| influences | Seneca, Marcel Proust, Montaigne, Stendhal, Gustave Flaubert | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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about this author
Alain de Botton is a writer and television producer who lives in London and aims to make philosophy relevant to everyday life. He is a writer of essayistic books, which refer both to his own experiences and ideas- and those of artists, philosophers and thinkers. It's a style of writing that has been termed a 'philosophy of everyday life.' His first book, Essays in Love [titled On Love in the US], minutely analysed the process of falling in and out of love. The style of the book was unusual, because it mixed elements of a novel together with reflections and analyses normally found in a piece of non-fiction. It's a book of which many readers are still fondest. Bibliography: * Essays In Love (1993) * The Romantic Movement (1994) ...more |
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books by Alain De Bottoncombine editionsavg rating: 3.83 | 3176 ratings | 26 distinct works
see all books by Alain De Botton » |
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quotes by Alain De Botton
"A storyteller who provided us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortunately, life itself often subscribes to this mode of storytelling, wearing us out with repetition, misleading emphases and inconsequential plot lines. It insists on showing us Bardak Electronics, the saftey handle in the car, a stray dog, a Christmas card and a fly that lands first on the rim and then in the centre of the ashtray.
Which explains how the curious phenomenon whereby valuable elements may be easier to experience in art and in anticipation than in reality. The anticipatory and artistic imaginations omit and compress; they cut away the periods of boredom and direct our attention to critical moments, and thus, without either lying or embellishing, they lend to life a vividness and a coherence that it may lack in the distracting wooliness of the present."
— Alain De Botton (The Art of Travel)
Which explains how the curious phenomenon whereby valuable elements may be easier to experience in art and in anticipation than in reality. The anticipatory and artistic imaginations omit and compress; they cut away the periods of boredom and direct our attention to critical moments, and thus, without either lying or embellishing, they lend to life a vividness and a coherence that it may lack in the distracting wooliness of the present."
— Alain De Botton (The Art of Travel)
"Rather than teasing the buyers, we may blame the society in which they lived for setting up a situation where the purchase of ornate cabinets felt psychologically necessary and rewarding, where respect was dependent on baroque displays. Rather than a tale of greed, the history of luxury could more accurately be read as a record of emotional trauma. It is the legacy of those who have felt pressured by the disdain of others to add an extraordinary amount to their bare selves in order to signal that they too may lay a claim to love."
— Alain De Botton (Status Anxiety)
— Alain De Botton (Status Anxiety)
"That said, deciding to avoid other people does not necessarily equate with having no desire whatsoever for company; it may simply reflect a dissatisfaction with what—or who—is available. Cynics are, in the end, only idealists with awkwardly high standards. In Chamfort's words, 'It is sometimes said of a man who lives alone that he does not like society. This is like saying of a man that he does not like going for walks because he is not fond of walking at night in the forêt de Bondy.'"
— Alain De Botton (Status Anxiety)
— Alain De Botton (Status Anxiety)