Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own – but that we could never have described on our own.
ALAIN DE BOTTONA danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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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Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don’t get on with machismo. I’m interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that’s what we are.
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As victims of hurt, we frequently don’t bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.
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It’s as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you’re living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.
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A ‘good job’ can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
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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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Dreams reveal we never quite get ‘over’ anything: it’s all still in there somewhere.
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Most good thinking has its origin in fear.
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Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
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One’s doing well if age improves even slightly one’s capacity to hold on to that vital truism: “This too shall pass.
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One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
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What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions.
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Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others – because it’s a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.
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Those who divorce aren’t necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.
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There’s a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.
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