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.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThe moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.
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There is real danger of a disconnect between what’s on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it’s not a disconnect that the world is ready to be patient with.
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The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.
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The finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.
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The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.
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Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
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…if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody.
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Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
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All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.
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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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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.
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The activities of drawing, eating and drinking, all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness from without to within.
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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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The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
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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?”
ALAIN DE BOTTON