The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.
ALAIN DE BOTTON
If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.
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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.
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Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm… it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly.
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Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place; our anxiety over losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the shutter.
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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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A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.
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Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.
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When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.
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The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.
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The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren’t there. The answers are there in the morning.
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One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.
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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
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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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON