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When we are too hard on ourselves, and doubt our worth or right to exist, it is because we haven't fully observed and remembered how hard it is, through no particular fault of our own, to be us. We may feel we have failed to make the most of our lives, but it is not (as we are punitively inclined to think) because we are leaden-souled wasters or reprobates, but because we came from a very difficult place and have had many demons to wrestle with. Like the ideal loving parent, we should keep the past firmly in mind and feel sorrow and sympathy for the problems it has generated; and like the ideal loving parent, we should insist that, despite everything, we are precious and worth keeping faith with.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 22)

The more we know of someone, the more difficult it becomes to caricature them with a single hostile slogan. Hatred is just a result of standing too far away, not daring to investigate who a person might really be or what they have gone through. There are - in the end - very few monsters; there are mostly only hasty judgements.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 22)

The aristocratically minded person has a good sense of history. They are aware of how consensus changes, quite dramatically, over time. Ideas from forty years ago about marriage or work, politics or sexuality now often strike us as quaint or absurd. The aristocrat draws the lesson that today's 'obvious' truths are equally fragile, and they therefore don't feel they owe them any special respect or adherence.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 20)

We're generally good at recognising the limitations of group wisdom when it clashes with avowed expertise: we don't think that an eye surgeon should base their treatments on 'what most people think'. But we don't similarly embrace the idea that we can be experts on ourselves and our own needs.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 20)

A parent and an adult child are emotionally intertwined, in intricate ways, for reasons that have nothing to do with personal preference. We're tied by history and biology to a being who was a god-like giant when we were tiny, but whose flaws we have since come to know in great and very painful detail. This never happens outside families: in no other situation are we forced into a death-bound union with someone who - given our divergent temperaments, tastes, habits and attitudes - we would never dream of selecting as a friend. We would do well to accept that as a strange, yet constant and simple, feature of the human condition, we are all emotionally tethered for life to someone who is both an irritating stranger with maddening habits and the person who wept for joy when we were born.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 17)

In a simpler relationship with our parents, we don't keep trying to get from them the things that they have shown themselves unable to offer. We know that they will never understand our childhood sorrows or why we have chosen our partner, so we don't launch into futile attempts at explanation. Instead, we focus, as much as possible, on the few areas where we can be peaceable together.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 16)

Simplicity in our familial relationships must spring from a recognition of the inherent complexity of what we're trying to do - which is to get on well with someone who has unavoidably damaged us and whose outlook on life can never reasonably align with our own.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 16)

A bond between two people can be deep and important precisely because it is not played out across all practical details of existence. By simplifying - and clarifying - what a relationship is for, we release ourselves from overly complicated conflicts, and can focus on our urgent, underlying needs to be sympathised with, seen and understood.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 14)

Kindness A partner who is gentle with our imperfections and can good-humouredly tolerate us as we are.

Shared vulnerability Someone with whom we can be open about our anxieties, worries and problems; someone we don't have to put on a front for; someone around whom we can be weak, vulnerable and honest - and who will be the same around us.

Understanding Someone who is interested in, and can make sense of, the obscure features of our minds: our obsessions, preoccupations and ways of seeing the world. And whom we are excited to understand in turn. If we have these three critical ingredients to hand, we will feel loved and essentially satisfied, whatever differences might later crop up.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 13)

Being straightforward on dates is a mechanism for two people to fast-forward time - and to spare themselves agony. We should know that a polished surface can't be a true picture of who anyone actually is. Only once our mutual complexities have been outlined should we believe that we are safe in the presence of a fellow mature and pleasingly direct individual. We will have the simpler relationships we desire when we can dare to share and accommodate the actual complexities of human nature.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 12)

Simplicity has become so elusive and desirable because the modern age is so troublingly, infinitely noisy and abundant. Industrialisation has made a vast array of products available to almost anyone at very low cost. We are bathed in options, surrounded by too much information with too many competing visions of happiness. We crave simplicity not because we are simple, but because we are drowning in complexity.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 6)

we can piece together a general thesis about taste: the taste of an era or a society reveals what people want more of but don't actually feel they securely possess.

— Simpler Life by Alain de Botton, The School Life of School The (Page 6)