Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own – but that we could never have described on our own.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWork finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.
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In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn’t worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there’s no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven’t had a good time, “Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?”
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The good parent: someone who doesn’t mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
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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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Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude – not a punishment for making money.
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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 materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word “luxury.
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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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Cynics are – beneath it all – only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
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Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.
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Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.
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What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.
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One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.
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To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.
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Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.
ALAIN DE BOTTON