Cynics are – beneath it all – only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
ALAIN DE BOTTONHow generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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When work is not going well, it’s useful to remember that our identities stretch beyond what is on the business card, that we were people long before we became workers – and will continue to be human once we have put our tools down forever.
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To one’s enemies: “I hate myself more than you ever could.
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How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?
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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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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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True love is a lack of desire to check one’s smartphone in another’s presence.
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There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.
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You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.
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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 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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There are selections so acute that they come to define a place, with the result that we can no longer travel through that landscape without being reminded of what a great artist noticed there.
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The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do; the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.
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Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
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True respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning.
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How do the stems connect to the roots?’ ‘Where is the mist coming from?’ ‘Why does one tree seem darker than another?’ These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.
ALAIN DE BOTTON