Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWhich seems no less relevant in the secular realm than in the religious one-that we have within us a precious, childlike, vulnerable core which we should nourish and nurture on its turbulent journey through life.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.
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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 need for love hallucinates a prince or princess. The oasis complex is never a complete delusion: the man in the desert does see something on the horizon. It is just that the palms have withered, the well is dry, and the place is infected with locusts.
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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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Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities.
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Every realistic picture represents a choice as to which features of reality should be given prominence; no painting ever captures the whole.
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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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It’s as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you’re living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.
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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.
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I went to church and couldn’t swallow it. The music was nice but I don’t belong there.
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What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions.
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In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
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The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
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Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.
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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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