At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.
ALAIN DE BOTTON
Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or bicycle.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming… If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
Most of us still caged within careers chosen for us by our not entirely worldly 18-22 year old selves.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.
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People only get really interesting when they start to rattle the bars of their cages.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
to design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
For paranoia about ‘what other people think’ : remember that only some hate, a very few love – and almost all just don’t care.
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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
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Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.
ALAIN DE BOTTON -
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 as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
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What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?
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Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.
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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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON