Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
ALAIN DE BOTTONTrue love is a lack of desire to check one’s smartphone in another’s presence.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
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Good sex isn’t just fun, it keeps us sane and happy. Having sex with someone makes us feel wanted, alive and potent.
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We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.
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The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.
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Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.
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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.
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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
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Dreams reveal we never quite get ‘over’ anything: it’s all still in there somewhere.
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The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.
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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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Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.
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How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?
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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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When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.
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Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind.
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