In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
ALAIN DE BOTTONDreams reveal we never quite get ‘over’ anything: it’s all still in there somewhere.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.
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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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The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.
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One’s doing well if age improves even slightly one’s capacity to hold on to that vital truism: “This too shall pass.
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A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.
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The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.
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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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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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Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.
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Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
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We should read other people’s books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer’s thought that help us to do so.
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Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.
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The largest part of what we call ‘personality’ is determined by how we’ve opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness”.
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Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
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We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.
ALAIN DE BOTTON