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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON
The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you’re annoyed with them.
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A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.
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What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?
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In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.
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Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
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It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.
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I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day to day take on things. The bare facts of life are utterly terrifying. And yet, one can laugh. Indeed, one has to laugh precisely because of the darkness: the nervous laughter of the trenches.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
The best cure for one’s bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
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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What kills us isn’t one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can’t turn down for fear of disappointing others.
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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
ALAIN DE BOTTON