The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn’t call.
ALAIN DE BOTTONBooksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn’t find anyone to talk to.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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As victims of hurt, we frequently don’t bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.
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One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?
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It’s as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you’re living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.
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It’s perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it’s perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.
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If one felt successful, there’d be so little incentive to be successful.
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Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.
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Most good thinking has its origin in fear.
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Although I don’t believe in God, Bach’s music shows me what a love of God must feel like.
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The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
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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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We don’t really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped … We suffer, therefore we think.
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I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or certainly the negative ones.
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I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.
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Literature is the greatest reality simulator – a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.
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Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.
ALAIN DE BOTTON