Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.
ALAIN DE BOTTONArchitects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.
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Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
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We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers… Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.
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The need for love hallucinates a prince or princess. The oasis complex is never a complete delusion: the man in the desert does see something on the horizon. It is just that the palms have withered, the well is dry, and the place is infected with locusts.
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Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves.
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In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water.
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We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or bicycle.
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The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.
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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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The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.
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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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People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.
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The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren’t there. The answers are there in the morning.
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There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.
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When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.
ALAIN DE BOTTON