In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer’s words, to turn pain into knowledge.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWe study biology, physics, movements of glaciers… Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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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Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
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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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We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.
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Newspapers are being read all around. The point is not, of course, to glean new information, but rather to coax the mind out of its sleep-induced introspective temper.
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The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
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Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
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It looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is actually the ultimate time-saver – because it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you years, decades, millennia to try to experience directly.
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My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.
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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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If one felt successful, there’d be so little incentive to be successful.
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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.
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The good parent: someone who doesn’t mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
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If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest – in all its ardour and paradoxes – than our travels.
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Curiosity takes ignorance seriously – and is confident enough to admit when it’s in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.
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For paranoia about ‘what other people think’ : remember that only some hate, a very few love – and almost all just don’t care.
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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.
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Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.
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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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It’s hard loving those who don’t much like themselves: “If you’re so great, why would you think I’m so great.
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Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude – not a punishment for making money.
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The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.
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How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?
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The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things
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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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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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