To one’s enemies: “I hate myself more than you ever could.
ALAIN DE BOTTONMost of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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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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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Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
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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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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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The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word “luxury.
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Which seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one-that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life.
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You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
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Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.
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The more closely we analyze what we consider ‘sexy,’ the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.
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Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn’t find anyone to talk to.
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Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.
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One’s doing well if age improves even slightly one’s capacity to hold on to that vital truism: “This too shall pass.
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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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The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.
ALAIN DE BOTTON