Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don’t get on with machismo. I’m interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that’s what we are.
ALAIN DE BOTTONCuriosity takes ignorance seriously – and is confident enough to admit when it’s in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.
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Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
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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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It is striking how much more seriously we are likely to be taken after we have been dead a few centuries.
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As adults, we try to develop the character traits that would have rescued our parents.
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Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
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What should worry us is not the number of people that oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so.
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There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed.
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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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Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.
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Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place; our anxiety over losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the shutter.
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Yet often, they know but just don’t care. So the task of serious journalism isn’t just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.
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Once I began to consider everything as being of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value.
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Our homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognise its harmony with our own prized internal song. Home can be an airport or a library, a garden or a motorway diner.
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Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.
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