Politics is so difficult, it’s generally only people who aren’t quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.
ALAIN DE BOTTONArtistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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.
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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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Not everyone is worth listening to.
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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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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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The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
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As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.
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One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.
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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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What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions.
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The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.
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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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Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions.
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Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
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Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.
ALAIN DE BOTTON