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.
ALAIN DE BOTTONTrue respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability.
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Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.
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Those who divorce aren’t necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.
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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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When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I’m basically the child of Richard Dawkins.
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Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others – because it’s a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.
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I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.
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The dream of the news is that it makes us care about other people and situations. But we cannot identify with people to whom we haven’t been introduced. Humans will only respond to art, to people who are skilled in making you care.
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All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.
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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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The best cure for one’s bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.
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The challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other’s smartphone.
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It’s perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it’s perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.
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He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.
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Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.
ALAIN DE BOTTON