People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThe happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust’s therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame; just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.
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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
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Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
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Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.
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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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William James once made an acute point about the relationship between happiness and expectation. He argued that satisfaction with ourselves does not require us to succeed in every endeavour.
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After 40 (old age for most of man’s history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.
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I passionately believe that’s it’s not just what you say that counts, it’s also how you say it – that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.
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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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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.
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We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.
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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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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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The dream of the news is that it makes us care about other people and situations. But we cannot identify with people to whom we haven’t been introduced. Humans will only respond to art, to people who are skilled in making you care.
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