Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.
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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Differ though we might with Christianity’s view of what precisely our souls need, it is hard to discredit the provocative underlying thesis.
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The finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.
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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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The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word “luxury.
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He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.
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Most anger stems from feelings of weakness, sadness and fear: hard to remember when one is at the receiving end of its defiant roar.
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These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.
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The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.
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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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We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.
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to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap
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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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We need objects to remind us of the commitments we’ve made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side of ourselves we’re in danger of losing touch with. Beautiful furniture gives us something to live up to. All designed objects are propaganda for a way of life.
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It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming… If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.
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It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.
ALAIN DE BOTTON