How do the stems connect to the roots?’ ‘Where is the mist coming from?’ ‘Why does one tree seem darker than another?’ These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.
ALAIN DE BOTTONInsomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Most of what makes a book ‘good’ is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
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A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.
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Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn’t know rejection and humiliation so intimately.
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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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Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.
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How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?
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Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
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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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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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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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Cynics are – beneath it all – only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
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As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.
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Mental health: having enough safe places in your mind for your thoughts to settle.
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The best cure for one’s bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.
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A ‘good job’ can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
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