It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThere’s a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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 works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn’t worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there’s no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven’t had a good time, “Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?”
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It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however calming, was also a reminder of infidelity to what I had at one time held so dear.
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You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you’re annoyed with them.
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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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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.
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Serious journalists often imagine society is adrift because people don’t know certain things.
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Although I don’t believe in God, Bach’s music shows me what a love of God must feel like.
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Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
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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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There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.
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The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
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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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Unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.
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One’s doing well if age improves even slightly one’s capacity to hold on to that vital truism: “This too shall pass.
ALAIN DE BOTTON