We don’t really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped … We suffer, therefore we think.
ALAIN DE BOTTONIt’s hard loving those who don’t much like themselves: “If you’re so great, why would you think I’m so great.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.
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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 largest part of what we call ‘personality’ is determined by how we’ve opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness”.
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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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We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.
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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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The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others’ appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.
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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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We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame; just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.
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The more closely we analyze what we consider ‘sexy,’ the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.
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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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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.
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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.
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Work is most fulfilling when you’re at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.
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Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.
ALAIN DE BOTTON