True love is a lack of desire to check one’s smartphone in another’s presence.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWe 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.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I’m basically the child of Richard Dawkins.
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What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions.
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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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The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
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All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.
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In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.
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Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.
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As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.
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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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Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.
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Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
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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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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 will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
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A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.
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Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.
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You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you’re annoyed with them.
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Curiosity takes ignorance seriously – and is confident enough to admit when it’s in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.
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If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination.
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The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word “luxury.
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Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.
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Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.
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Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
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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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We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.
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Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.
ALAIN DE BOTTON