We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWe 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.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.
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It wasn’t only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public.
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Most good thinking has its origin in fear.
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The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.
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The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.
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The dream of the news is that it makes us care about other people and situations. But we cannot identify with people to whom we haven’t been introduced. Humans will only respond to art, to people who are skilled in making you care.
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Differ though we might with Christianity’s view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis.
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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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Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.
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You need a long hard day’s work to reveal the logic of the craving for very bad tv and alcohol.
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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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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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I went to church and couldn’t swallow it. The music was nice but I don’t belong there.
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Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.
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A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.
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