Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.
ALAIN DE BOTTONEnvy: a confused, tangled guide to one’s own ambitions.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
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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.
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An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths – by panicked shouting.
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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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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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Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn’t know rejection and humiliation so intimately.
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As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.
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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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I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.
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Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
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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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We are not always humiliated by failing; we are humiliated only if we first invest our pride and sense of worth in a given achievement and then do not reach it.
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What should worry us is not the number of people that oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so.
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It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.
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There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.
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