Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.
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 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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The happiness that may emerge from taking a second look is central to Proust’s therapeutic conception. It reveals the extent to which our dissatisfactions may be the result of failing to look properly at our lives rather than the result of anything inherently deficient about them.
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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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The company of certain people may excite our generosity and sensitivity, while that of others awakens our competitiveness and envy.
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The longing for destiny is nowhere stronger than in our romantic life.
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To one’s enemies: “I hate myself more than you ever could.
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Unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.
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Yet often, they know but just don’t care. So the task of serious journalism isn’t just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.
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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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Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
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At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.
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The activities of drawing, eating and drinking, all involve assimilations by the self of desirable elements from the world, a transfer of goodness from without to within.
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One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.
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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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Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn’t find anyone to talk to.
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