The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn’t call.
ALAIN DE BOTTONIt looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is actually the ultimate time-saver – because it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you years, decades, millennia to try to experience directly.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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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There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.
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Writing isn’t a career choice. It’s self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off.
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It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.
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Maturity: knowing where you’re crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.
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Not everyone is worth listening to.
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Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
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True love is a lack of desire to check one’s smartphone in another’s presence.
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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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Most good thinking has its origin in fear.
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You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you’re annoyed with them.
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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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Social media has lots of benefits, but compared to Christianity, it tends to group people by interests. Religion puts you with people who have nothing in common except that you’re human.
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We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
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A ‘good job’ can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
ALAIN DE BOTTON