We don’t really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped … We suffer, therefore we think.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWe don’t really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped … We suffer, therefore we think.
ALAIN DE BOTTONBeing content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWe each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.
ALAIN DE BOTTONSocial media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people who have nothing in common except that you’re human.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThere 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.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWhat kills us isn’t one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can’t turn down for fear of disappointing others.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThe more closely we analyze what we consider ‘sexy,’ the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThere’s a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThe fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThe challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other’s smartphone.
ALAIN DE BOTTONCuriosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions.
ALAIN DE BOTTONRage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWhat is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
ALAIN DE BOTTONArtistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.
ALAIN DE BOTTONI feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWe need objects to remind us of the commitments we’ve made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side of ourselves we’re in danger of losing touch with. Beautiful furniture gives us something to live up to. All designed objects are propaganda for a way of life.
ALAIN DE BOTTON