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Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.

Alain de Botton

The good parent: someone who doesn’t mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Children Good Hate Mind Parent Someone Time
When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Evaluate Modest Property Repeatedly Scene Urge Value World
What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Beauty Deep External Inward Object Physical Possess Seek Tell Voice
Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Eat Force People Promote Together Tolerance
What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Suppose Think
It’s as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you’re living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Accept Afford Desire Either Grow Poorer Possess Relative Resource Rich Something Time
When I see someone like Richard Dawkins, I see my father. I grew up with that. I’m basically the child of Richard Dawkins.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Basically Child Father People See Someone
The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others’ appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Affiche Appraisal Attention Congenital Determine Matter People Uncertainty
If one felt successful, there’d be so little incentive to be successful.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Felt Incentive Successful
The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Depend Happy Look Only Realise Thing Way
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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Compare Crucial Expectation Keep Mould Other Response Temper World
We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anything Beautiful Difficulty Embarrassed Failure Feel
In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn’t worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there’s no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven’t had a good time, “Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?”
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Death Life Reason Successful Tell Work Year
What should worry us is not the number of people that oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Good Number Oppose People Reason Worry
It looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is actually the ultimate time-saver – because it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you years, decades, millennia to try to experience directly.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Access Emotion Like Literature Look Range Saver Time Ultimate Waste
Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
ALAIN DE BOTTON

Anger Bitterness Came Forget

Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.

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Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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