The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.
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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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.
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Don’t despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don’t – surrender to events with hope.
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Serious journalists often imagine society is adrift because people don’t know certain things.
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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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At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.
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If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination.
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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 pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.
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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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Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.
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The very act of drawing an object, however badly, swiftly takes the drawer from a woolly sense of what the object looks like to a precise awareness of its component parts and particularities.
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Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.
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There is always the option of being emotionally lazy, that is, of quoting.
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You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
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People who readily accept the need for a gym will resist that their personalities might need some work too.
ALAIN DE BOTTON