The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.
ALAIN DE BOTTONOne of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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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If one felt successful, there’d be so little incentive to be successful.
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Must being in love always mean being in pain?
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True respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning.
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Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
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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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Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm… it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly.
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Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.
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At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.
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In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn’t worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there’s no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven’t had a good time, “Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?”
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If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest – in all its ardour and paradoxes – than our travels.
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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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Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
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After 40 (old age for most of man’s history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.
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Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system-the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side-they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but can’t afford airtime in a commercialized, status-consciou s, and cynical world.
ALAIN DE BOTTON