Alain de Botton Quote

Perhaps because the origins of a certain kind of love lie in an impulse to escape ourselves and our weaknesses by an alliance with the beautiful and noble. But if the loved ones love us back, we are forced to return to ourselves, and are hence reminded of the things that had driven us into love in the first place? Perhaps it was not love we wanted after all, perhaps it was simply someone to believe in--but how can we believe in the beloved now that they believe in us?

Alain de Botton

Perhaps because the origins of a certain kind of love lie in an impulse to escape ourselves and our weaknesses by an alliance with the beautiful and noble. But if the loved ones love us back, we are forced to return to ourselves, and are hence reminded of the things that had driven us into love in the first place? Perhaps it was not love we wanted after all, perhaps it was simply someone to believe in--but how can we believe in the beloved now that they believe in us?

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About Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton (; born 20 December 1969) is a Swiss-born British author and public speaker. His books discuss various contemporary subjects and themes, emphasizing philosophy's relevance to everyday life. He published Essays in Love (1993), which went on to sell two million copies. Other bestsellers include How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997), Status Anxiety (2004), and The Architecture of Happiness (2006).
He co-founded The School of Life in 2008 and Living Architecture in 2009. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2011. In 2015, he was awarded "The Fellowship of Schopenhauer", an annual writers' award from the Melbourne Writers Festival, for that work.