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.
ALAIN DE BOTTONIn a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Differ though we might with Christianity’s view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis.
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Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
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Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
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In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
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…if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody.
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It’s hard loving those who don’t much like themselves: “If you’re so great, why would you think I’m so great.
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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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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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Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.
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Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
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The best cure for one’s bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.
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To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.
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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.
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Work is most fulfilling when you’re at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.
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Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
ALAIN DE BOTTON