We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers… Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWhat we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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True respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning.
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It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things.
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The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.
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My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.
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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 as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you’re living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.
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Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.
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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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Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
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The good parent: someone who doesn’t mind, for a time, being hated by their children.
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Every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
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Don’t despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don’t – surrender to events with hope.
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When Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.
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A successful work will draw out the features capable of exciting a sense of beauty and interest in the spectator.
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We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON