to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap
ALAIN DE BOTTONIt 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.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.
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Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories: the story of our quest for sexual love and the story of our quest for love from the world.
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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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The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.
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Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.
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Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.
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After 40 (old age for most of man’s history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.
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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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My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.
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Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
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Cynics are – beneath it all – only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
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An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths – by panicked shouting.
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It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.
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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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One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
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