Memory is… similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.
ALAIN DE BOTTON
The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Memory is… similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions.
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The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.
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Cynics are – beneath it all – only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
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I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
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As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers – and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.
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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
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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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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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Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, “Don’t you worry about being called names?” retorted, “Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?
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We need objects to remind us of the commitments we’ve made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side of ourselves we’re in danger of losing touch with. Beautiful furniture gives us something to live up to. All designed objects are propaganda for a way of life.
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Envy: a confused, tangled guide to one’s own ambitions.
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Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.
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In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.
ALAIN DE BOTTON