Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
ALAIN DE BOTTONUnhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Newspapers 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.
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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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Must being in love always mean being in pain?
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There’s a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.
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The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do; the task can be as paralysing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.
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The activities of drawing, eating and drinking, all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness from without to within.
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One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
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Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.
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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.
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I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or certainly the negative ones.
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Our greatest furies spring from events which violate our sense of the ground of our existence.
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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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In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer’s words, to turn pain into knowledge.
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Unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.
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Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.
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