Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
ALAIN DE BOTTONDo you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
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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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Most of what makes a book ‘good’ is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
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The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.
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What kills us isn’t one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can’t turn down for fear of disappointing others.
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Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system-the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side-they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but can’t afford airtime in a commercialized, status-consciou s, and cynical world.
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There is always the option of being emotionally lazy, that is, of quoting.
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Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.
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We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.
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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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Only by declaring a book completely finished can one start to see how much remains to be done on it.
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The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.
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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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Good sex isn’t just fun, it keeps us sane and happy. Having sex with someone makes us feel wanted, alive and potent.
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Cynics are – beneath it all – only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
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