The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.
ALAIN DE BOTTONIn their different ways, art and philosophy help us, in Schopenhauer’s words, to turn pain into knowledge.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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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 best cure for one’s bad tendencies is to see them in action in another person.
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For paranoia about ‘what other people think’ : remember that only some hate, a very few love – and almost all just don’t care.
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When work is not going well, it’s useful to remember that our identities stretch beyond what is on the business card, that we were people long before we became workers – and will continue to be human once we have put our tools down forever.
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Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
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The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.
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One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.
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It is perhaps sad books that best console us when we are sad.
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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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What should worry us is not the number of people that oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so.
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There is a longing for a return to a time without the need for choices, free of the regret at the inevitable loss that all choice (however wonderful) has entailed.
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The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.
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It looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is actually the ultimate time-saver – because it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you years, decades, millennia to try to experience directly.
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In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water.
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