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  • Alain de Botton Quotes   372
  • Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind. The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Blessed Quotes , Sadness Quotes
  • We need objects to remind us of the commitments we've made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side of ourselves we're in danger of losing touch with. Beautiful furniture gives us something to live up to. All designed objects are propaganda for a way of life.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Commitment Quotes
  • It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming... If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Life Quotes , Dust Quotes
  • 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.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Looks Quotes , May Quotes
  • We don't exist unless there is someone who can see us existing, what we say has no meaning until someone can understand, while to be surrounded by friends is constantly to have our identity confirmed; their knowledge and care for us have the power to pull us from our numbness. In small comments, many of them teasing, they reveal they know our foibles and except them and so, in turn, accept that we have a place in the world.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Numbness Quotes , Identity Quotes
  • Literature deeply stands opposed to the dominant value system-the one that rewards money and power. Writers are on the other side-they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are of deep importance but can’t afford airtime in a commercialized, status-consciou s, and cynical world.
  • 6 years ago



    Tags : Alain de Botton Quotes , Ideas Quotes , Cynical Quotes