It wasn’t only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThere are selections so acute that they come to define a place, with the result that we can no longer travel through that landscape without being reminded of what a great artist noticed there.
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 will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
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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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Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence; no painting ever captures the whole.
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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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If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest – in all its ardour and paradoxes – than our travels.
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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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Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.
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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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Serious journalists often imagine society is adrift because people don’t know certain things.
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The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.
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Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others.
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Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone – and finding that that’s ok with them.
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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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON