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.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThe longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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The good parent: someone who doesn’t mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
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Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone – and finding that that’s ok with them.
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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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Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.
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We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
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The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
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You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
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The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust’s therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.
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Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as ‘doing nothing’.
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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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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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We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.
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It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.
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So many complaints boil down to the belly ache of the fragile, mortal, ignored ego in a vast and indifferent universe.
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We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.
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