If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThe fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.
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Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude – not a punishment for making money.
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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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Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system-the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side-they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but can’t afford airtime in a commercialized, status-consciou s, and cynical world.
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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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True respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning.
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I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
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We should read other people’s books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer’s thought that help us to do so.
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The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.
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There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.
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Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.
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Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.
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He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.
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Man seems merely dust postponed: the sublime as an encounter – pleasurable, intoxicating, even – with human weakness in the face of strength, age and size of the universe.
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Don’t despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don’t – surrender to events with hope.
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Social media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people who have nothing in common except that you’re human.
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Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
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There is real danger of a disconnect between what’s on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it’s not a disconnect that the world is ready to be patient with.
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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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The largest part of what we call ‘personality’ is determined by how we’ve opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness”.
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Politics is so difficult, it’s generally only people who aren’t quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.
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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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A good half of the art of living is resilience.
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Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.
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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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A ‘good job’ can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
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