Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.
ALAIN DE BOTTONRage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Good sex isn’t just fun, it keeps us sane and happy. Having sex with someone makes us feel wanted, alive and potent.
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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
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Arguments are like eels: however logical, they may slip from the minds weak grasp unless fixed there by imagery and style.
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It wasn’t only fanatics and drunkards who began conversations with strangers in public.
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Maturity: knowing where you’re crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.
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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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Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
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I went to church and couldn’t swallow it. The music was nice but I don’t belong there.
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Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.
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You have to be quite heavily invested in someone to do them the honour of telling them you’re annoyed with them.
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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.
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There is always the option of being emotionally lazy, that is, of quoting.
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Not everyone is worth listening to.
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I passionately believe that’s it’s not just what you say that counts, it’s also how you say it – that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.
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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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