To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.
ALAIN DE BOTTONOur capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Politics is so difficult, it’s generally only people who aren’t quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.
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In the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation.
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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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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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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 is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.
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One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.
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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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It’s perhaps easier now than ever before to make a good living; it’s perhaps harder than ever before to stay calm, to be free of career anxiety.
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Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others – because it’s a tool to help us live and die with a little bit more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.
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If one felt successful, there’d be so little incentive to be successful.
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The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
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Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.
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The dream of the news is that it makes us care about other people and situations. But we cannot identify with people to whom we haven’t been introduced. Humans will only respond to art, to people who are skilled in making you care.
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To one’s enemies: “I hate myself more than you ever could.
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