I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
ALAIN DE BOTTONOne of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.
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Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
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You need a long hard day’s work to reveal the logic of the craving for very bad tv and alcohol.
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One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
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I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day to day take on things. The bare facts of life are utterly terrifying. And yet, one can laugh. Indeed, one has to laugh precisely because of the darkness: the nervous laughter of the trenches.
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The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn’t call.
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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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Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
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The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do; the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.
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Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.
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We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability.
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When work is not going well, it’s useful to remember that our identities stretch beyond what is on the business card, that we were people long before we became workers – and will continue to be human once we have put our tools down forever.
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Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.
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The problem isn’t so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice.
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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
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