Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThe difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.
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As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.
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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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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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Although I don’t believe in God, Bach’s music shows me what a love of God must feel like.
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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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The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.
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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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When work is not going well, it’s useful to remember that our identities stretch beyond what is on the business card, that we were people long before we became workers – and will continue to be human once we have put our tools down forever.
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We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame; just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.
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Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.
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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.
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Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
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Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others – because it’s a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.
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We 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.
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Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.
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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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We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.
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The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.
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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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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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A good half of the art of living is resilience.
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It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.
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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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The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do; the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.
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As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.
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