The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.
ALAIN DE BOTTONThe flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm… it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly.
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Work is most fulfilling when you’re at the comfortable, exciting edge of not quite knowing what you are doing.
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In the works of Lucretius, we find two reasons why we shouldn’t worry about death. If you have had a successful life, Lucretius tell us, there’s no reason to mind its end. And, if you haven’t had a good time, “Why do you seek to add more years, which would also pass but ill?”
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We are not always humiliated by failing; we are humiliated only if we first invest our pride and sense of worth in a given achievement and then do not reach it.
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True love is a lack of desire to check one’s smartphone in another’s presence.
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The best cure for one’s bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.
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Socrates, on being insulted in the marketplace, asked by a passerby, “Don’t you worry about being called names?” retorted, “Why? Do you think I should resent it if an ass had kicked me?
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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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If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest – in all its ardour and paradoxes – than our travels.
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What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?
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We will cease to be angry once we cease to be so hopeful.
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Unnatural to expect that learning to be happy should be any easier than, say, learning to play the violin or require any less practice.
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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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When you look at the Moon, you think, ‘I’m really small. What are my problems?’ It sets things into perspective. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often.
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We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.
ALAIN DE BOTTON