Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWe need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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 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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It seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us recognise the important things that we are too defeated or embittered to recognise from day to day.
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What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.
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We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
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Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.
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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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We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
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Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.
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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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True love is a lack of desire to check one’s smartphone in another’s presence.
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We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.
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It’s perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it’s perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.
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What kills us isn’t one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can’t turn down for fear of disappointing others.
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Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.
ALAIN DE BOTTON