The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
ALAIN DE BOTTONForcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
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Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.
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The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.
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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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What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.
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You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you’re annoyed with them.
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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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It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming… If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.
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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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We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
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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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Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone – and finding that that’s ok with them.
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Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.
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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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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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON