Unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThese inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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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Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system-the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side-they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but can’t afford airtime in a commercialized, status-consciou s, and cynical world.
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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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Memory is… similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.
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My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.
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Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.
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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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Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don’t get on with machismo. I’m interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that’s what we are.
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We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
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In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
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It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.
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The media insists on taking what someone didn’t mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.
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As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.
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In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn’t worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there’s no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven’t had a good time, “Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?”
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So many complaints boil down to the belly ache of the fragile, mortal, ignored ego in a vast and indifferent universe.
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