Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
ALAIN DE BOTTONOur minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.
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We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like; we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.
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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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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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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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Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.
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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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The best cure for one’s bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.
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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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As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.
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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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One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
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There is real danger of a disconnect between what’s on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it’s not a disconnect that the world is ready to be patient with.
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It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.
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Bad art might be defined as a series of bad choices about what to show and what to leave out.
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