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.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWhen 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.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
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To one’s enemies: “I hate myself more than you ever could.
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If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest – in all its ardour and paradoxes – than our travels.
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At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.
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The 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.
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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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In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer’s words, to turn pain into knowledge.
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These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.
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We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
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Unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.
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Newspapers are being read all around. The point is not, of course, to glean new information, but rather to coax the mind out of its sleep-induced introspective temper.
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The very act of drawing an object, however badly, swiftly takes the drawer from a woolly sense of what the object looks like to a precise awareness of its component parts and particularities.
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After 40 (old age for most of man’s history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.
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The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.
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Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
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