Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone – and finding that that’s ok with them.
ALAIN DE BOTTONLiterature is the greatest reality simulator – a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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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Out of the millions of people we live among, most of whom we habitually ignore and are ignored by in turn, there are always a few that hold hostage our capacity for happiness, whom we could recognize by their smell alone and whom we would rather die than be without.
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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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A ‘good job’ can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
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We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.
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The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.
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We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
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We are not always humiliated by failing; we are humiliated only if we first invest our pride and sense of worth in a given achievement and then do not reach it.
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For paranoia about ‘what other people think’ : remember that only some hate, a very few love – and almost all just don’t care.
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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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Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.
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A good half of the art of living is resilience.
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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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Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.
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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
ALAIN DE BOTTON