Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind.
ALAIN DE BOTTONIntuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
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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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When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.
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Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.
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Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.
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What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.
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The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.
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Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.
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The activities of drawing, eating and drinking, all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness from without to within.
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If one felt successful, there’d be so little incentive to be successful.
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If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest – in all its ardour and paradoxes – than our travels.
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How do the stems connect to the roots?’ ‘Where is the mist coming from?’ ‘Why does one tree seem darker than another?’ These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.
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In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water.
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Maturity: knowing where you’re crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.
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The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.
ALAIN DE BOTTON