You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
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 our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.
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When work is not going well, it’s useful to remember that our identities stretch beyond what is on the business card, that we were people long before we became workers – and will continue to be human once we have put our tools down forever.
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Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
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When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.
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The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn’t call.
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Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.
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The dream of the news is that it makes us care about other people and situations. But we cannot identify with people to whom we haven’t been introduced. Humans will only respond to art, to people who are skilled in making you care.
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Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
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Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.
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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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It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.
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Which 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.
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Memory is… similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection.
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When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.
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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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON