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Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone – and finding that that’s ok with them.

Alain de Botton

Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Agent Ask Change Hope Simply Travel Wiser Wish
What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anyone Fascinate Marriage Married
We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anything Beautiful Difficulty Embarrassed Failure Feel
What kills us isn’t one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can’t turn down for fear of disappointing others.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Disappoint Kill Obligation Other Thing Thousand
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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Day General Life Optimistic Person Pessimistic Take Terrific Thing
All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Fill Hire Humiliation People Private Publisher Tour Venue Wait
Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Embarrassingly Learn never Oneself Some Stupid Thing
It’s perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it’s perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Before Bore Calm Easier Even Good Live Make Perhaps Stay
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 BOTTON

Conscious Employing Less Medium Pay Rather Substitute Supplement Used
I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Actual Excuse Fantasies Job Learn Live Perfect Relationship
The good parent: someone who doesn’t mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Children Good Hate Mind Parent Someone Time
When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I’m basically the child of Richard Dawkins.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Basically Child Father People See Someone
Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Before Blend Define Joy Melancholy Perfection Sadness Sear
We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Crowd Inside Newspaper Raed Stuff Tale Weird
The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren’t there. The answers are there in the morning.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Answer Best Mind Morning Think
The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Apparently Blunt Connect Esoteric Larger One Question Smaller

Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone – and finding that that’s ok with them.

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Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone – and finding that that’s ok with them.

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Popular Authors

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