“We don't need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have mastered is the occasional capacity to acknowledge with good grace that we may, in one or two areas, be somewhat insane.”— Alain de Botton, amazon.com
“When two people belong together, there is simply--at long last--a wondrous reciprocal feeling that both parties see the world in precisely the same way.”— Alain de Botton, amazon.com
“Marriage: a hopeful, generous, infinitely kind gamble taken by two people who don't know yet who they are or who the other might be, binding themselves to a future they cannot conceive of and have carefully omitted to investigate.”— Alain de Botton, amazon.com
“We believe we are seeking happiness in love, but we are really after is familiarity.”— Alain de Botton, amazon.com
“There is, in the early period of love where...we can be childish, imaginative, wild, hopeful, cynical, fragile, and multiple; all of this our lover can understand and accept us for.”— Alain de Botton, amazon.com
“Love is dividend of gratitude for our lover's insight into our own confused and troubled psyche.”— Alain de Botton, amazon.com
“Love reaches a pitch at those moments when our beloved turns out to understand, more clearly than others have ever been able to, and perhaps even better than we do ourselves, the chaotic, embarrassing, and shameful parts of us. That someone else gets who we are and both sympathizes with us and forgi…”— Alain de Botton, amazon.com
“Love is also, and equally, about weakness, about being touched by another's fragilities and sorrows, especially when--as happens in the early days--we ourselves are in no danger of being held responsible for them.”— Alain de Botton, amazon.com
“Love means admiration for qualities in the lover that promise to correct our weaknesses and imbalances; love is a search for completion.”— Alain de Botton, amazon.com
“We allow our love stories to end way too early. We seem to know far too much about how love starts, and recklessly little about how it might continue.”— Alain de Botton, amazon.com
“Love stories begin not when we fear someone may be unwilling to see us again but when they decide they would have no objection to seeing us all the time; not when they have every opportunity to run away but when they have exchanged solemn vows promising to hold us, and be held captive by us, for lif…”— Alain de Botton, amazon.com