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 BOTTONYou need a long hard day’s work to reveal the logic of the craving for very bad tv and alcohol.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.
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We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
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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.
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Most good thinking has its origin in fear.
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Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.
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Literature is the greatest reality simulator – a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.
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To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.
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People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.
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Those who divorce aren’t necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.
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The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do; the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.
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Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
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The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
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Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
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An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths – by panicked shouting.
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What kills us isn’t one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can’t turn down for fear of disappointing others.
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