We should read other people’s books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing, even if it is another writer’s thought that help us to do so.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWhen Proust urges us to evaluate the world properly, he repeatedly reminds us of the value of modest scenes.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
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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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The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
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We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like; we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.
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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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Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
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The 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.
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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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Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.
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The inability to live in the present lies in the fear of leaving the sheltered position of anticipation or memory, and so of admitting that this is the only life that one is ever likely (heavenly intervention aside) to live.
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Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind.
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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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The finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.
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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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The only way to be happy is to realise how much depends on how you look at things
ALAIN DE BOTTON