Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others.
ALAIN DE BOTTON
Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others.
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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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We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like; we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.
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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 one’s enemies: “I hate myself more than you ever could.
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Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others – because it’s a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.
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The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things
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Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.
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Dreams reveal we never quite get ‘over’ anything: it’s all still in there somewhere.
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I went to church and couldn’t swallow it. The music was nice but I don’t belong there.
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Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.
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People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.
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If one felt successful, there’d be so little incentive to be successful.
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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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Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.
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Maturity: knowing where you’re crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.
ALAIN DE BOTTON