The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things
ALAIN DE BOTTONWe each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.
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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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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We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.
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The best cure for one’s bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.
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The activities of drawing, eating and drinking, all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness from without to within.
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Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.
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Memory is… similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.
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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.
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How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?
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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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Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.
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The more closely we analyze what we consider ‘sexy,’ the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.
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The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.
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A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.
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The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren’t there. The answers are there in the morning.
ALAIN DE BOTTON