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.
ALAIN DE BOTTONNewspapers are being read all around. The point is not, of course, to glean new information, but rather to coax the mind out of its sleep-induced introspective temper.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
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There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it.
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The more closely we analyze what we consider ‘sexy,’ the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.
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Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others.
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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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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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A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.
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These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.
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Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.
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I went to church and couldn’t swallow it. The music was nice but I don’t belong there.
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One’s doing well if age improves even slightly one’s capacity to hold on to that vital truism: “This too shall pass.
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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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The greatest difficulty of Travel is that one is forced to take oneself along.
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When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.
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We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.
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