Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThose who divorce aren’t necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves.
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Must being in love always mean being in pain?
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Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.
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Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.
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People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.
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We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.
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Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.
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Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
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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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Most good thinking has its origin in fear.
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Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.
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It seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us recognise the important things that we are too defeated or embittered to recognise from day to day.
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As victims of hurt, we frequently don’t bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.
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The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others’ appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.
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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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