There is real danger of a disconnect between what’s on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it’s not a disconnect that the world is ready to be patient with.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThe dream of the news is that it makes us care about other people and situations. But we cannot identify with people to whom we haven’t been introduced. Humans will only respond to art, to people who are skilled in making you care.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.
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The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.
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We should read other people’s books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer’s thought that help us to do so.
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Politics is so difficult, it’s generally only people who aren’t quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.
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As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.
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The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.
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In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.
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The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.
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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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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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The media insists on taking what someone didn’t mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.
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Mental health: having enough safe places in your mind for your thoughts to settle.
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True respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning.
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…if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody.
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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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON