Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
ALAIN DE BOTTON
Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
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True love is a lack of desire to check one’s smartphone in another’s presence.
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One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?
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The good parent: someone who doesn’t mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
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Must being in love always mean being in pain?
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Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
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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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I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
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Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.
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I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day to day take on things. The bare facts of life are utterly terrifying. And yet, one can laugh. Indeed, one has to laugh precisely because of the darkness: the nervous laughter of the trenches.
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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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Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.
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Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.
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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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We need objects to remind us of the commitments we’ve made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side of ourselves we’re in danger of losing touch with. Beautiful furniture gives us something to live up to. All designed objects are propaganda for a way of life.
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The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.
ALAIN DE BOTTON