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Existence becomes overcomplicated when we submit ourselves to tasks or possessions without having a clear sense of their purpose. When we don't properly know why we're doing something, we don't know how much of it we need in our life. Simplicity, therefore, can be defined as the result and precious fruit of clarifying our goals.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 85)

by announcing our retirement from social life or relationships, we're making it clear that there's no suppressed personal hatred at play in our decision. We're just rejigging our priorities.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 81)

We could step back from having an impressive car or a large house and declare that we were 'retiring from consumer society'. While such a move would typically be seen as a mark of failure, with the word 'retirement' now attached to it we can imply that our interests have been willingly and intelligently redirected towards more aesthetic or spiritual targets.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 81)

If the news offered us what we truly needed, it would be worthy of our constant attention. As it is, we can - in good conscience and with great relief - largely ignore it, simplify our days and use our new-found time to roam more imaginatively through the world for the information that will genuinely help us.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 74)

The truly well-read person isn't the one who has read a gargantuan number of books, but someone who has let themselves, and their capacity to live and die well, be profoundly shaped by a very few well-chosen titles.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 71)

Our preoccupation with money feels highly respectable, but its true cause is poignant and unexpected: we keep wanting more money because we haven't yet identified a passion that matters enough to us that it replaces money-making in our minds.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 62)

We come to grief not because we haven't rushed around enough or put in a sufficient number of hours at the coalface, but because there has, somewhere along the way, been a shortfall in thinking.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 57)

We will at last be able to turn in early - and get the sleep we need - not when our irritation with ourselves reaches an unbearable peak and we finally submit to the banality of an early bedtime, but when we seek our pleasures where they can more realistically be found: in the bright, energetic hours of the new day.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 47)

As adults, we need the maternal part of ourselves to step in and prescribe slower, quieter days - and to rescue us from the oppressive ideal of the busy life, which is slowly destroying us.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 43)

What matters isn't so much where you happen to be located, but how you engage with whatever - or whoever - happens to be around. These thoughts liberate us from the imaginary devotion to 'centrism' that does so much to complicate and undermine our brief lives.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 41)

We believe we cannot be content living just anywhere; we gird ourselves to make a bid for life at the 'centre', in one of the world's current hotspots. As a result, we face intense competition and have to work incredibly hard just to survive. Soon we come to think that it's not simply living in the right city that counts; we have to be in the right part, be invited to certain parties, attend particular events and know certain key people.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 37)

We should restrict our social lives to the occasional, exceptional evening out with a true friend who can both laugh and cry with us, sympathise with us and exchange authentic and heartfelt notes with us on the fleeting ecstasies and long-running sorrows of being human.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 29)

The moral is clear. If we seek others, we should stay at home; if we wish to alleviate loneliness, we should turn down invitations; if we want company, we would be better off communing with dead writers and poets than hunting for solace at large gatherings.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 29)

we should remember to be more childlike. As children don't know what they are supposed to think, they naturally go with their true feelings - and sometimes come out with startlingly insightful and prescient judgements as a result. Trusting their own minds, they tell us that Granny is a bit selfish or that spiders are pretty; they blurt out that a lavish wedding was very boring or that the nicest thing in the world is to lie on the floor looking at the ceiling. Once we throw off the shackles of what other people think, and how we assume we're meant to feel, we're free to discover what genuinely matters to us, however eccentric or odd it might appear. We can discover for ourselves what manner of life pleases us, and the fact that it may look absurd or ridiculous or frivolous to others won't particularly bother us.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 23)