Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWhich 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.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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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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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Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.
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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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Dreams reveal we never quite get ‘over’ anything: it’s all still in there somewhere.
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In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer’s words, to turn pain into knowledge.
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My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.
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We should read other people’s books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer’s thought that help us to do so.
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I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or certainly the negative ones.
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The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.
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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.
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Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude – not a punishment for making money.
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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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It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming… If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.
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Unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.
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