# Quote — Alain de Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy

> We don't exist unless there is someone who can see us existing, what we say has no meaning until someone can understand, while to be surrounded by friends is constantly to have our identity confirmed; their knowledge and care for us have the power to pull us from our numbness. In small comments, many of them teasing, they reveal they know our foibles and except them and so, in turn, accept that we have a place in the world.

- Author: [Alain de Botton](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton.md)
- Book: [The Consolations of Philosophy](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-consolations-of-philosophy.md)
- Page: 57
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alain_de_Botton#The_Consolations_of_Philosophy_(2000)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-consolations-of-philosophy/we-dont-exist

## More from this book

> By travelling across frontiers, on horseback and in the imagination, Montaigne invited us to to exchange local prejudices and the self division they induced for less constraining identities as citizens of the world.

p. 146 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-consolations-of-philosophy/by-travelling-across.md)

> To cut out every negative root would simultaneously mean choking off positive elements that might arise from it further up the stem of the plant.
>
> We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

p. 228 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-consolations-of-philosophy/to-cut-out.md)

> In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer's words, to turn pain into knowledge.

p. 199 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/alain-de-botton/the-consolations-of-philosophy/in-their-different.md)