Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions.
ALAIN DE BOTTONSocial media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people who have nothing in common except that you’re human.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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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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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Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.
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I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or certainly the negative ones.
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The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.
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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 mind does most of its best thinking when we aren’t there. The answers are there in the morning.
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A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.
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Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.
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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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Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
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Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.
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The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others’ appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.
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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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I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
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