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The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust’s therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.

Alain de Botton

The good parent: someone who doesn’t mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
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Children Good Hate Mind Parent Someone Time
How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?
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Accept Generous Gift never Offer People
Which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one-that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life.
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Childlike Journey Life Nourish Precious Relevant Secular Seem Vulnerable
The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
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Apparently Blunt Connect Esoteric Larger One Question Smaller
What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions.
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Ambition Argue Author Focus Idea Make Own Success Sure Want
We don’t really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped … We suffer, therefore we think.
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Anything Hope Learn Pain Properly Something Suffer
The problem isn’t so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice.
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Embed Everyday Find Good Practice Problem
There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.
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Devilishly Direct Idea Nervous Prospect Relationship Significance Think
An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths – by panicked shouting.
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Argument Attempt Couple Important Introduce Truth
The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain.
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Always Flawless Mediocrity Object Perspective Thing Throw Wish
Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm… it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly.
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Conscious Contribute Create Enthusiasm Guide Merely More Single
The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.
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Challenge Human Interest More Now Smartphone
Literature is the greatest reality simulator – a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.
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Direct Great Literature Machine Put Reality Simulator Witness
One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.
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Important One Successful Suffer Teach Thing Unexpectedly
One’s doing well if age improves even slightly one’s capacity to hold on to that vital truism: “This too shall pass.
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Age Capacity Do Hold Improve One Pass Shall Slightly
Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as ‘doing nothing’.
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Blankly Chair Describe Disrespect Doing Gaze Nothing Sit Someone Think Window

The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust’s therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.

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The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust’s therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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