Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
ALAIN DE BOTTONMust being in love always mean being in pain?
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Cynics are – beneath it all – only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
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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 will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
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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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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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Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves.
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Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
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Dreams reveal we never quite get ‘over’ anything: it’s all still in there somewhere.
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Politics is so difficult, it’s generally only people who aren’t quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.
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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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We don’t really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped … We suffer, therefore we think.
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We are not always humiliated by failing; we are humiliated only if we first invest our pride and sense of worth in a given achievement and then do not reach it.
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For paranoia about ‘what other people think’ : remember that only some hate, a very few love – and almost all just don’t care.
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Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
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In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water.
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The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
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Serious journalists often imagine society is adrift because people don’t know certain things.
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Yet often, they know but just don’t care. So the task of serious journalism isn’t just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.
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Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.
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Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.
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Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
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The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.
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The very act of drawing an object, however badly, swiftly takes the drawer from a woolly sense of what the object looks like to a precise awareness of its component parts and particularities.
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What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
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What should worry us is not the number of people that oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so.
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It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.
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