Must being in love always mean being in pain?
ALAIN DE BOTTONOne’s doing well if age improves even slightly one’s capacity to hold on to that vital truism: “This too shall pass.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
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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 only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.
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Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.
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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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One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of appreciate and be grateful for what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.
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The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones.
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We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
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Everyone wants a better life: very few of us want to be better people.
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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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The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
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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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How do the stems connect to the roots?’ ‘Where is the mist coming from?’ ‘Why does one tree seem darker than another?’ These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.
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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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In their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer’s words, to turn pain into knowledge.
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The greatest works of art speak to us without knowing us.
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A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.
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Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others.
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Literature is the greatest reality simulator – a machine that puts you through infinitely more situations than you can ever directly witness.
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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.
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As victims of hurt, we frequently don’t bring up what ails us, because so many wounds look absurd in the light of day.
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The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.
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True respectability stems not from the will of the majority but from proper reasoning.
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The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word “luxury.
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I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
ALAIN DE BOTTON