A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.
ALAIN DE BOTTONAlthough I don’t believe in God, Bach’s music shows me what a love of God must feel like.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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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Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
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There is real danger of a disconnect between what’s on your business card and who you are deep inside, and it’s not a disconnect that the world is ready to be patient with.
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Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.
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There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
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We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.
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Forcing people to eat together is an effective way to promote tolerance.
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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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Cynics are – beneath it all – only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
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We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers… Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.
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Most good thinking has its origin in fear.
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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 most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once [we soon feel ungrateful] or those who never allow us to kiss them [we soon forget them], but those who coyly lead us between the two extremes.
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Not everyone is worth listening to.
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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.
ALAIN DE BOTTON