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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| c821ca5 | Reading Proust nearly silenced Virginia Woolf. She loved his novel, but loved it rather too much. There wasn't enough wrong with it--a crushing recognition when one considers Walter Benjamin's assessment of why people become writers: because they are unable to find a book already written that they are completely happy with. And | Alain de Botton | ||
| 2ebb227 | Nothing is erotic that isn't also, with the wrong person, revolting, which is precisely what makes erotic moments so intense: at the precise juncture where disgust could be at its height, we find only welcome and permission. | Alain de Botton | ||
| f55046d | Academic masochism reflects a metaphysical prejudice that the truth should be a hard-won treasure, that what is read or learnt easily must therefore be flighty and inconsequential. The truth should be like a mount to be scaled, it is dangerous, obscure and demanding. Under the light of the library reading room, the academics' motto reads: the more a text makes me suffer, the truer it must be. | books love truth | Alain de Botton | |
| ba244bb | The true aspiration of art should be to reduce the need for it. It is not that we should one day lose our devotion to the things that art addresses: beauty, depth of meaning, good relationships, the appreciation of nature, recognition of the shortness of life, empathy, compassion, and so on. Rather, having imbibed the ideals that art displays, we should fight to attain in reality the things art merely symbolises, however graciously and inte.. | audiences | Alain de Botton | |
| b9d1fa2 | Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpredictable soil of medieval Europe, modern populations have nonetheless shown a remarkable capacity to feel that neither who they are nor what they have is quite enough. | dissatisfaction modern-age possibilities wealth | Alain de Botton | |
| 88ead26 | I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me. | Alain de Botton | ||
| abc0cff | What makes people good communicators is, in essence, an ability not to be fazed by the more problematic or offbeat aspects of their own characters. They can contemplate their anger, their sexuality, and their unpopular, awkward, or unfashionable opinions without losing confidence or collapsing into self-disgust. They can speak clearly because they have managed to develop a priceless sense of their own acceptability. They like themselves wel.. | children communication communicators family parenting parents self-acceptance self-knowledge | Alain de Botton | |
| dd7faff | We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the inferiors of the virgin land they have replaced. We owe it to the worms and the trees that the building we cover them with will stand as promises of the highest and most intelligent kinds of happiness. | homes houses land nature | Alain de Botton | |
| 35d810e | Partially undermining the manufacturer's ability to assert that its work constituted a meaningful contribution to mankind was the frivolous way in which it went about marketing its products. Grief was the only rational response to the news that an employee had spent three months devising a supermarket promotion based on an offer of free stickers of cartoon characters called the Fimbles. Why had the grown-ups so churlishly abdicated their re.. | business death marketing meaning products promotions work | Alain de Botton | |
| f6e2be8 | Solitary though we may have become, we haven't of course given up all hope of forming relationships. In the lonely canyons of the modern city, there is no more honoured emotion than love. However, this is not the love of which religions speak, not the expansive, universal brotherhood of mankind; it is a more jealous, restricted and ultimately meaner variety. It is a romantic love which sends us on a maniacal quest for a single person with w.. | modernity | Alain de Botton | |
| 4bc65a5 | A danger of travel is that we may see things at the wrong time, before we have had an opportunity to build up the necessary receptivity, so that new information is as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain. | Alain de Botton | ||
| cc9b4c3 | The study of maps and the perusal of travel books aroused in me a secret fascination that was at times almost irresistible. | explorer scientists travel | Alain de Botton | |
| bab2c49 | In a way it was like a bunch of guys in a game. They were falling behind every minute that passed, but they had lost interest in the score. It was as if they were just a ton behind and had given up on the win. And maybe deep inside they didn't want to peep the score, maybe they knew what was happening but just didn't want to think about it anymore. I could understand that. I had played enough ball in my life, and was deep enough into my gam.. | Walter Dean Myers | ||
| d3b3567 | Everything in life is made up...You make up that you are happy. You make up that you are sad. You make up that you are in love. If you don't make up your own life, who's going to make it up for you? It's bad enough when you die and everybody can make up their own stories about you. --Mr. Hooft | Walter Dean Myers | ||
| 0e8dad9 | I had no idea what I was paying James, but based on his picnic-assembling skills alone, he needed a raise. | salary | Lish McBride | |
| 2a089e0 | The greatest gift that anyone can give anyone is LIFE. And the greatest sin a person can do is to take away that life. NEXT to that, all rules and religions in the worldare secondary, mere words and beliefs that people CHOOSE to believe and KILL and HATE by. | James McBride | ||
| 3dde329 | Well, crew, welcome aboard the gas freighter _Rocinante_.' 'What does that name even mean?'... 'It means we need to go find some windmills | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 88a63d9 | Yes, you're in charge. That makes me XO, and it's the XO's job to tell the captain when he's being an idiot. You're being an idiot, sir. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| a4e475a | We're not people," he said. "We're the stories that people tell each other about us. Belters are crazy terrorists. Earthers are lazy gluttons. Martians are cogs in a great big machine." "Men are fighters," Naomi said, and then, her voice growing bleak. "Women are nurturing and sweet and they stay home with the kids. It's always been like that. We always react to the stories about people, not who they really are." "And look where it got us,".. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 71251dc | Sure, humans had invaded an extra-dimensional space with wormholes to points scattered across the galaxy, but they'd remembered to bring ferns. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 9fc6e57 | Science had given mankind many gifts, and she valued it. But the one important thing it had taken away was the value of subjective, personal experience. That had been replaced with the idea that only measurable and testable concepts had value. But humans didn't work that way... | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 3382a1e | How the fuck do you keep your hair like that? I look like a hedgehog's been humping my skull. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 421ebe5 | Probably the most common last words that day were going to be Huh, that's weird. That or Oh shit. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| bdd600b | Hey," she said. "Hey." "So I have a thing." "Is it a thing I can fix?" Holden asked. "Point me at the thing." | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 3db97f8 | My life has become a single, ongoing revelation that I haven't been cynical enough." At" | James S.A. Corey | ||
| bf37b5e | If Miller had brought him all this way just to let him die in an abandoned train car, it was the longest prank setup in history. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| ac5d9aa | Change should be watched, moderated, and questioned. But that conservative view shouldn't rein in progress or put a damper on hope. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 3676104 | It'd be a better world if there was always at least one right answer instead of a bucket of fucked." -Chrisjen Avasarala" | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 62195ac | That Holden is up to something? Have you met that guy? He's never done anything secretly in his life. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 7a7674a | Commit to finding the true nature of art. Go for that thing no one can teach you. Go for that communion, that real communion with your soul, and the discipline of expressing that communion with others. That doesn't come from competition. That comes from being one with what you are doing. | competition | Anna Deavere Smith | |
| dea3010 | Hard work by itself isn't worth two cents on a rainy day if it doesn't give you a good life. | Walter Dean Myers | ||
| 707732d | Now as to magic. It is surely absurd to hold me "weak" or otherwise because I choose to persist in a study which I decided deliberately four or five years ago to make, next to my poetry, the most important pursuit of my life...If I had not made magic my constant study I could not have written a single word of my Blake book [ | poetry | William Butler Yeats | |
| f89150b | It was Christmas Eve. Big snowflakes fluttered slowly through the air like white feathers and made all of the Heavenly Valley smooth and white and quiet and beautiful. Tall fir trees stood up to their knees in snow and their outstretched hands were heaped with it. Those that were bare of leaves wore soft white fur on their scrawny, reaching arms and all the stumps and low bushes had been turned into fat white cupcakes. | snow winter | Betty MacDonald | |
| e6c330d | The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it. | devil god hell liberty milton poetry | William Blake | |
| a0f73ed | Anger was something I could control. I could settle into an easy rhythm of blame and hate. Focus my energy on something other than the ache in my heart. | Emily Giffin | ||
| 932fee0 | But there is one constant, one thing you can always count on: that not only does love come first, but at the end, it is the only thing that remains. | Emily Giffin | ||
| bfb7b45 | Then he continues his rant,saying, "And even if I didn't know them, I know their type." "And what type is that?" she asks,leaning foward in her chair,yearning for confirmation that he gets it,that they are like-minded in their observations of others and the circumspect way they view the world. "Oh,let's see," he says,rubbing his jaw. "Superficial.Artificial.Sheep. They're more worried about how they come across to others than who they rea.. | Emily Giffin | ||
| f09e89c | It's not that simple or clear-cut - and I wonder if it ever is when it comes to matters of the heart. | Emily Giffin | ||
| 6e9feb3 | I cheated with Rachel, but I'll never cheat on Rachel. | Emily Giffin | ||
| 745e1bb | But certainly not everyday you can find someone who wants to have a monogamous relationship | lovers relationships | Emily Giffin | |
| 12e871f | The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock, but of wisdom: no clock can measure. | time wisdom | William Blake | |
| 507eeea | Eternity He who binds himself to a joy Does the winged life destroy But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity's sun rise --WILLIAM BLAKE | René Daumal | ||
| 11d81e7 | If a thing loves, it is infinite. | William Blake | ||
| 86ad2e6 | And throughout all Eternity I forgive you, you forgive me. | William Blake |