Most of what makes a book ‘good’ is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThe largest part of what we call ‘personality’ is determined by how we’ve opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness”.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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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We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.
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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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We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
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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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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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Out of the millions of people we live among, most of whom we habitually ignore and are ignored by in turn, there are always a few that hold hostage our capacity for happiness, whom we could recognize by their smell alone and whom we would rather die than be without.
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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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Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.
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We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability.
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The media insists on taking what someone didn’t mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.
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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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If one felt successful, there’d be so little incentive to be successful.
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As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.
ALAIN DE BOTTON