We need objects to remind us of the commitments we’ve made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side of ourselves we’re in danger of losing touch with. Beautiful furniture gives us something to live up to. All designed objects are propaganda for a way of life.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThe media insists on taking what someone didn’t mean to say as being far closer to the truth than what they did.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can’t accept that.
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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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It seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us recognise the important things that we are too defeated or embittered to recognise from day to day.
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We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or bicycle.
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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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The good parent: someone who doesn’t mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
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We are not always humiliated by failing; we are humiliated only if we first invest our pride and sense of worth in a given achievement and then do not reach it.
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Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.
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All tours are filled with humiliation. My publisher once hired a private jet to fly me to a venue where 1,000 people were waiting. It almost bankrupted him.
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Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.
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There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed.
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The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren’t there. The answers are there in the morning.
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Don’t despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don’t – surrender to events with hope.
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It’s hard loving those who don’t much like themselves: “If you’re so great, why would you think I’m so great.
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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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON