The good parent: someone who doesn’t mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWe need objects to remind us of the commitments we’ve made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side of ourselves we’re in danger of losing touch with. Beautiful furniture gives us something to live up to. All designed objects are propaganda for a way of life.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude – not a punishment for making money.
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A good half of the art of living is resilience.
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All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.
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Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.
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Memory is… similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.
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Not everyone is worth listening to.
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The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
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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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It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.
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A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.
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Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.
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It’s perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it’s perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.
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In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer’s words, to turn pain into knowledge.
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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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Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence; no painting ever captures the whole.
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