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 BOTTONOnly as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.
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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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Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities.
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Literature is the greatest reality simulator – a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.
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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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When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.
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After 40 (old age for most of man’s history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.
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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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The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.
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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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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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The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.
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Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And 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 virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.
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Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.
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True love is a lack of desire to check one’s smartphone in another’s presence.
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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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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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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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Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.
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Social media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people who have nothing in common except that you’re human.
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To one’s enemies: “I hate myself more than you ever could.
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Must being in love always mean being in pain?
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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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We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
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One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
ALAIN DE BOTTON