I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actually be an excuse for not living.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWe will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn’t know rejection and humiliation so intimately.
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Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.
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We don’t really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped … We suffer, therefore we think.
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When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.
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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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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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Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.
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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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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 materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word “luxury.
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How generous was it to offer gifts to people one knew would never accept them?
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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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Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.
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The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.
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Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don’t get on with machismo. I’m interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that’s what we are.
ALAIN DE BOTTON