Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.
ALAIN DE BOTTONRage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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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to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap
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The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.
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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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Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.
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Envy: a confused, tangled guide to one’s own ambitions.
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The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.
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The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.
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Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
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How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?
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Differ though we might with Christianity’s view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis.
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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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Not everyone is worth listening to.
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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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Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.
ALAIN DE BOTTON