Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn’t find anyone to talk to.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWhat is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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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Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.
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Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.
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As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.
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It wasn’t only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public.
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The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
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The need for love hallucinates a prince or princess. The oasis complex is never a complete delusion: the man in the desert does see something on the horizon. It is just that the palms have withered, the well is dry, and the place is infected with locusts.
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As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers – and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.
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One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.
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It’s hard loving those who don’t much like themselves: “If you’re so great, why would you think I’m so great.
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One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.
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There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed.
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Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.
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How do the stems connect to the roots?’ ‘Where is the mist coming from?’ ‘Why does one tree seem darker than another?’ These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.
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There’s a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.
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