We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.
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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Out of the millions of people we live among, most of whom we habitually ignore and are ignored by in turn, there are always a few that hold hostage our capacity for happiness, whom we could recognize by their smell alone and whom we would rather die than be without.
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Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
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Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.
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We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
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Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
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We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame; just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.
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Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.
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to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap
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I went to church and couldn’t swallow it. The music was nice but I don’t belong there.
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Politics is so difficult, it’s generally only people who aren’t quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.
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The challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other’s smartphone.
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True love is a lack of desire to check one’s smartphone in another’s presence.
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It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming… If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.
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One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.
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We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers… Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.
ALAIN DE BOTTON