On Love

by Alain de Botton

It is one of the ironies of love that it is easiest confidently to seduce those we are least attracted to.

Cupid’s arrow greatly easier to send than receive.

Unrequited love may be painful, but it is safely painful, because it does not involve inflicting damage on anyone but oneself, a private pain that is as bittersweet as it is self-induced.

subjective theory of beauty makes the observer wonderfully indispensable.

Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing; that we cannot properly speak until there is someone there who can understand what we are saying; that, in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.

Lovers may kill their own love story for no other reason than that they are unable to tolerate the uncertainty, the sheer risk, that their experiment in happiness has delivered.

there is a great difference between identifying a problem and solving it, between wisdom and the wise life. We are all more intelligent than we are capable,