Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
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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Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.
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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.
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Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.
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Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.
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There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.
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A good half of the art of living is resilience.
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The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
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Dreams reveal we never quite get ‘over’ anything: it’s all still in there somewhere.
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Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.
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Although I don’t believe in God, Bach’s music shows me what a love of God must feel like.
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Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.
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We don’t really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped … We suffer, therefore we think.
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Good sex isn’t just fun, it keeps us sane and happy. Having sex with someone makes us feel wanted, alive and potent.
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The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.
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Curiosity takes ignorance seriously – and is confident enough to admit when it’s in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.
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As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers – and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.
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As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.
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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.
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The very act of drawing an object, however badly, swiftly takes the drawer from a woolly sense of what the object looks like to a precise awareness of its component parts and particularities.
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Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.
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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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Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.
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Work is most fulfilling when you’re at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.
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We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.
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These 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.
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