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The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.

Alain de Botton

Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Enough Everyone Love May Real Strength Test Weakness Wek You
Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Beautiful Deal Endeavor Feeling Long Love Purchase Response Something Think Way
Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system-the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side-they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but can’t afford airtime in a commercialized, status-consciou s, and cynical world.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Act Conscious Cynical Draw Money Object Power World
Social media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people who have nothing in common except that you’re human.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Benefit Community Compare Interest Media Religious Social
Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Curiosity Distance Extend Huge Outward Picture Question Small Some Time
A ‘good job’ can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Devote Enough Entire Good Job Life Practically
The challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other’s smartphone.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Challenge Interest Modern More Other Prove Relationship Smartphone
Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Behaviour Forgive Malice Require Sense Sign Suffer
A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Archive Enough Ordinary Strive Virtuous Wisdom
Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

After All Get OK People System Tendency Top Unfortunate
We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anyone Aware Capable Disease Instantly Intelligent Love More never Save
Bad art might be defined as a series of bad choices about what to show and what to leave out.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Bad Choice Define Leave might Out Series Show
There’s a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Allow Category Enough Help People Themselves Weird Whole
When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Evaluate Modest Property Repeatedly Scene Urge Value World
Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Content Less Perhaps Play Practice Require Well
If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anticipate Art Besides Forget Inclined Much Perhaps World

The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.

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The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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