Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others.
ALAIN DE BOTTONIt is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Those who divorce aren’t necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.
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Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.
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We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.
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Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.
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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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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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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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It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.
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There’s a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.
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The problem is if you really believe in a society where those who merit to get to the top, get to the top, you’ll also, by implication … believe in a society where those who deserve to get to the bottom also get to the bottom and stay there.
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Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
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It’s perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it’s perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.
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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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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
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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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON