It’s hard loving those who don’t much like themselves: “If you’re so great, why would you think I’m so great.
ALAIN DE BOTTONHow generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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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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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The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things
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We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.
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You need a long hard day’s work to reveal the logic of the craving for very bad tv and alcohol.
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Dreams reveal we never quite get ‘over’ anything: it’s all still in there somewhere.
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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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Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.
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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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Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.
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William James once made an acute point about the relationship between happiness and expectation. He argued that satisfaction with ourselves does not require us to succeed in every endeavour.
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Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.
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Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.
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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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Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind.
ALAIN DE BOTTON