Politics is so difficult, it’s generally only people who aren’t quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.
ALAIN DE BOTTONGood sex isn’t just fun, it keeps us sane and happy. Having sex with someone makes us feel wanted, alive and potent.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.
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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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If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination.
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Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place; our anxiety over losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the shutter.
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To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.
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The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn’t call.
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Bad art might be defined as a series of bad choices about what to show and what to leave out.
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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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The challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other’s smartphone.
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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
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Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities.
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The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.
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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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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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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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON