Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
ALAIN DE BOTTONAn argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths – by panicked shouting.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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.
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One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?
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Yet often, they know but just don’t care. So the task of serious journalism isn’t just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.
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He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.
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What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
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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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Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.
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Although I don’t believe in God, Bach’s music shows me what a love of God must feel like.
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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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I passionately believe that’s it’s not just what you say that counts, it’s also how you say it – that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.
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What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?
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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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When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.
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The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.
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One’s doing well if age improves even slightly one’s capacity to hold on to that vital truism: “This too shall pass.
ALAIN DE BOTTON