Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
ALAIN DE BOTTONNever too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain.
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Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.
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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 only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.
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In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water.
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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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Curiosity takes ignorance seriously – and is confident enough to admit when it’s in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.
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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.
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The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.
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One kind of good book should leave you asking: how did the author know that about me?
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There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed.
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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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The activities of drawing, eating and drinking, all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness from without to within.
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We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.
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We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like; we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.
ALAIN DE BOTTON