We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability.
ALAIN DE BOTTONSweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don’t get on with machismo. I’m interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that’s what we are.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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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These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.
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Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
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We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.
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We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.
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The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others’ appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.
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There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
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There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.
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Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, “Don’t you worry about being called names?” retorted, “Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?
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As victims of hurt, we frequently don’t bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.
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I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
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Curiosity takes ignorance seriously – and is confident enough to admit when it’s in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.
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Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.
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I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.
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William James once made an acute point about the relationship between happiness and expectation. He argued that satisfaction with ourselves does not require us to succeed in every endeavour.
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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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People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.
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In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
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We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or bicycle.
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When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I’m basically the child of Richard Dawkins.
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The media insists on taking what someone didn’t mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.
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The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
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Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.
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The need for love hallucinates a prince or princess. The oasis complex is never a complete delusion: the man in the desert does see something on the horizon. It is just that the palms have withered, the well is dry, and the place is infected with locusts.
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The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn’t call.
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It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.
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