We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.
ALAIN DE BOTTONWe need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability.
More Alain de Botton Quotes
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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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There may be significant things to learn about people by looking at what annoys them most.
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It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.
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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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We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability.
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Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don’t get on with machismo. I’m interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that’s what we are.
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Although I don’t believe in God, Bach’s music shows me what a love of God must feel like.
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Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own – but that we could never have described on our own.
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Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time.
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We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.
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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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In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
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William James once made an acute point about the relationship between happiness and expectation. He argued that satisfaction with ourselves does not require us to succeed in every endeavour.
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Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.
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Not everyone is worth listening to.
ALAIN DE BOTTON