We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
ALAIN DE BOTTONBecause the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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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There is always the option of being emotionally lazy, that is, of quoting.
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The good parent: someone who doesn’t mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
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Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.
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It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.
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One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.
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An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths – by panicked shouting.
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Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.
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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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Dreams reveal we never quite get ‘over’ anything: it’s all still in there somewhere.
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Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.
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In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
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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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Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.
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Cynics are – beneath it all – only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
ALAIN DE BOTTON






