Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.
ALAIN DE BOTTONBecause the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Man seems merely dust postponed: the sublime as an encounter – pleasurable, intoxicating, even – with human weakness in the face of strength, age and size of the universe.
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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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So many complaints boil down to the belly ache of the fragile, mortal, ignored ego in a vast and indifferent universe.
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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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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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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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Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude – not a punishment for making money.
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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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There is real danger of a disconnect between what’s on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it’s not a disconnect that the world is ready to be patient with.
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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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Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.
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It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.
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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.
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We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers… Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.
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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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