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 BOTTONThe telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn’t call.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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To one’s enemies: “I hate myself more than you ever could.
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What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.
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…if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody.
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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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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
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If one felt successful, there’d be so little incentive to be successful.
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Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.
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The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn’t call.
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As victims of hurt, we frequently don’t bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.
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Insomnia is a glamorous term for thoughts you forgot to have in the day.
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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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We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers… Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.
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Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.
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William James once made an acute point about the relationship between happiness and expectation. He argued that satisfaction with ourselves does not require us to succeed in every endeavour.
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Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.
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