We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or bicycle.
ALAIN DE BOTTONPaying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude – not a punishment for making money.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.
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Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.
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As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.
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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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We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.
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Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn’t know rejection and humiliation so intimately.
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How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?
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Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
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Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.
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The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain.
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The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can’t accept that.
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Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
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Don’t despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don’t – surrender to events with hope.
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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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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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON