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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 09d91ca | The whole art of living is to make use of the individuals through whom we suffer. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 6a68dd2 | Our feelings of anxiety are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss, and so need to be listened to and patiently interpreted -- processes which are unlikely to be completed when we have to hand, in the computer, one of the most powerful tools of distraction ever invented. The entire internet is in a sense pornographic, a deliverer of a constant excitement that we have no innate capacity to resist, a seducer that leads us down p.. | boredom distraction internet internet-addiction pornography | Alain de Botton | |
| 900bd49 | for happiness and unhappiness are sisters and even twins that either grow up together or, as in your case, remain small together. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 552603a | We are richer than we think, each one of us. | Alain de Botton | ||
| dbc040a | Hate is the hidden script in the letter of love; its foundations are shared with its opposite. The woman seduced by her partner's way of kissing her neck, turning the pages of a book, or telling a joke watches irritation collect at precisely these junctures. It is as if the end of love is already contained in its beginning, the ingredients of love's collapse eerily foreshadowed by those of its creation. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 23be8e2 | However disgruntled or puzzled a social hierarchy may leave us feeling, we are apt to go along with it on the resigned assumption that it is too entrenched and must be too well founded to be questioned. We are led to believe, in other words, that communities and the principles underpinning them are, practically speaking, immutable-- even, somehow, natural. | Alain de Botton | ||
| aa0effc | We can be laughed into silence for attempting to speak in praise of phenomena which we lack the right words to describe. We may censor ourselves before others have the chance to do so. We may not even notice that we have extinguished our own curiosity, just as we may forget we had something to say until we find someone who is willing to hear it. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 505ed37 | Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first--the story of our quest for sexual love--is well known and well charted, its vagaries form the staple of music and literature, it is socially accepted and celebrated. The second--the story of our quest for love from the world--is a more secret and shameful tale. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 8149b18 | In the past, Flaubert implied, idiots had had no clue as to what the carbon structure of diamonds was. Their shallowness had been entirely and reliably evident. But now the press had made it very possible for a person to be at once unimaginative, uncreative, mean-minded and extremely well informed. The modern idiot could routinely know what only geniuses had known in the past, and yet he still was an idiot- a depressing combination of trait.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| b331496 | We learn, too, that being another's servant is not humiliating, quite the opposite, for it sets us free from the wearying responsibility of continuously catering to our own twisted, insatiable natures. We learn the relief and privilege of being granted something more important to live for than ourselves. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 5d85373 | By overwhelming consensus, our culture locates the primary difficulty of relationships in finding the 'right' person rather than in knowing how to love a real -- that is, a necessarily rather unright -- human being. | Alain de Botton | ||
| ae03062 | the only difference between the end of love and the end of life being that at least in the latter, we are granted that the comforting thought that we will not feel anything after death. No such comfort for the lover, who knows that the end of the relationship will not necessarily be the end of love, and almost certainly no the end of life. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 76dc012 | A well-loved child is set a challenging precedent. In its very nature, parental love works to conceal the effort which went into generating it. It shields the recipient from the donor's complexity and sadness - and from an awareness of how many other interests, friends and concerns the parent has sacrificed in the name of love. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 8db037c | One could be forgiven for supposing that rationality (or, more softly, 'reasonableness') is irrelevant - and even possibly opposed - to being a good lover. This is perhaps because we tend to think of love as a feeling, rather than as an achievement of intelligence. A reasonable or rational person is not one who is only interested in logic, or someone who tries in a cold, robotic fashion to substitute calculation and analysis for kindness or.. | rationality relationships | Alain de Botton | |
| aa84eda | Chamfort, echoing the misanthropic attitude of generations of philosophers before and after him, put the matter simply: 'Public opinion is the worst of all opinions. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 2a2c1ee | I believe that the sight is more important thing that the drawing; and i would rather teach drawing that my pupils may learn to love nature, that teach looking at nature that they may learn to draw. | Alain de Botton | ||
| c9d94cf | There are few things humans are more dedicated to than unhappiness. Had we been placed on earth by a malign creator for the exclusive purpose of suffering, we would have good reason to congratulate ourselves on our enthusiastic response to the task. Reasons to be inconsolable abound: the frailty of our bodies, the fickleness of love, the insincerities of social life, the compromises of friendship, the deadening effects of habit. In the face.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 482a35b | Silence and clumsiness could of course be taken as rather pitiful proof of desire. It being easy enough to seduce someone towards whom one feels indifferent, the clumsiest seducers could generously be deemed the most genuine. Not to find the right words is paradoxically often the best proof that the right words are meant. | Alain de Botton | ||
| e3ccc7d | He entertains a confused wish to help her, without, however, understanding that help can be a challenging gift to deliver to those who are most in need of it. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 114800e | We are never through with the requirement for acceptance. This isn't a curse limited to the inadequate and the weak. Insecurity may even be a peculiar sign of well-being. It means we haven't allowed ourselves to take other people for granted, that we remain realistic enough to see that things could genuinely turn out badly and that we are invested enough to care. | love reassurance | Alain de Botton | |
| 1d9344d | Few in this world are ever simply nasty; those who hurt us are themselves in pain. The appropriate response is hence never cynicism nor aggression but, at the rare moments one can manage it, always love. Kirsten | Alain de Botton | ||
| ed5c66d | But calm is precisely what is absent from love's classroom. There is simply too much on the line. The "student" isn't merely a passing responsibility; he or she is a lifelong commitment. Failure will ruin existence. No wonder we may be prone to lose control and deliver cack-handed, hasty speeches which bear no faith in the legitimacy or even the nobility of the act of imparting advice. And no wonder, too, if we end up achieving the very opp.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| b11d297 | In our more arrogant moments, the sin of pride--or superbia, in Augustine's Latin formulation--takes over our personalities and shuts us off from those around us. We become dull to others when all we seek to do is assert how well things are going for us, just as friendship has a chance to grow only when we fare to share what we are afraid of and regret. The rest is merely showmanship. The flaws whose exposure we so dread, the indiscretions .. | friendship human-condition masks pride vanity | Alain de Botton | |
| 4cbd473 | How pleasant to hold in mind, through the crevasses of our moods, at three in the afternoon when lassitude and despair threaten, that there is always a plane taking off for somewhere. | Alain de Botton | ||
| f3e7826 | We seem normal only to those who don't know us very well. In a wiser, more self-aware society than our own, a standard question on an early dinner date would be; "And how are you crazy?" The problem is that before marriage, we rarely delve into our complexities. Whenever casual relationships threaten to reveal our flaws, we blame our partners and call it a day. As for our friends, they don't care enough to do the hard work of enlightening u.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| a13062e | Beauty is the promise of happiness. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 7df15ea | chgwnh yn aghy mn` z `shq shdn mn nshd? zyr GyrmnTqy w khwdkhnh bwdn i nyzm br tmylm bh bwr an my chrbyd. agh bwdm khh z khwd by khwdy `shqnh chh khlyy r my twnst pr khnd. my dnstm wqty ngsht rwy khsy my gdhshtym khh dwstsh bdrym chh sh`fy bh m dst my dhd. Htmlan mdt h pysh z an khh chshmm hm bh khlwy'h byftd, nyz dshth m dr chhrh khsy an Sdqty r bybm khh hrgz dr chhrh khwdm ndydh bwdm. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 98be729 | God I am looking for the one thing I have never felt but once, and I would walk through heaven and earth to find it, if he would but let me find him, so that I could feel it; and if I were to feel it again I would never leave that feeling, or him that gave it to me." - The Dreamer" | James McBride | ||
| 56bb129 | We all got to die," she said. "But dying as your true self is always better. God'll take you however you come to Him. But it's easier on a soul to come to Him clean. You're forever free that way. From top to bottom." | religious the-good-lord-bird | James McBride | |
| 9e2e072 | You could see him coming from a distance, appearing out of nowhere like an angel, his silhouette seeming to rise from the ground in the simmering heat . . . | James McBride | ||
| 139665f | for one thing you learns when you is a girl is that most women's hearts is full of secrets. | James McBride | ||
| 43f7bc3 | lm t`d ldy dmw` l'dhrfh fqd nfdt mndh zmn Twyl, wlkn 'lman jdydan ww`yan jdydan wld fy dkhly. bd' lGmwD lmtwTn fy dkhly ytbkhr, wzl l'lm ldhy sh`r bh lwld lSGyr ldhy Hdq fy lmra@. lqd styqZt nsnyty lkhS@, wS`dt ltHyyny bmSfH@, fym rqbt bzwG nwr lshms l'wl fwq l'fq. qlt lnfsy n hnk frqan kbyran byn lmwt wlHy@, w'n '`Zm hdy@ ymkn 'n y`Tyh lnsn lshkhS akhr hy lHy@, w'n '`Zm khTyy'@ ymkn 'n yrtkbh lnsn bHq shkhS akhr hy slb hdhh lHy@, l~ jnb dh.. | James McBride | ||
| 1bf47da | but all your 'sorrys' are gone when a person dies... That's why you have to say all your 'sorrys' and 'I love yous' while a person is living, because tomorrow isn't promised. | James McBride | ||
| 340ae04 | Chase looked 'round and seen Frederick's grave where we'd buried him. "Who's that?" "Don't know. We been hiding in this thicket while the Free Staters was scouting 'round here. I heard 'em say it was one of theirs." Chase pondered the grave thoughtfully. "It's a fresh grave. We ought to see if who'sever in there got on boots," he said." | James McBride | ||
| 2d62102 | As a boy, I never knew where my mother was from---where she was born, who her parents were. When I asked she'd say, "God made me." When I asked if she was white, she'd say, "I'm light-skinned," and change the subject. She raised twelve black children and sent us all to college and in most cases graduate school. Her children became doctors, professors, chemists, teachers---yet none of us even knew her maiden name until we were grown. It took.. | James McBride | ||
| 4acf7a5 | It's a war. Wars aren't like that." "Aren't like what?" Roberts said. "Aren't like stories about wars," Vandercaust answered solemnly. "Stories about wars come after." | James S.A. Corey | ||
| fd70f4e | I mean, weird, dead alien technology with effects we don't understand sweeping whole ships away without leaving a trace or explanation. That's probably safe to play with, right? | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 90f552e | I told you before that Johnson would be off the board, and he will be. We didn't take him at Tycho, and we'll take him somewhere else. He is my white whale, and I will hunt him to the end of time." Rosenfeld looked down at his bulb, his body hunching a degree in submission. Filip had felt his father's victory like it was his own. "Didn't finish reading that book, did you?" Rosenfeld asked mildly." | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 5976c33 | The door to the primary power junction was reinforced. A red border was painted around the frame, with warnings in half a dozen languages that all meant Please be careful. There's a lot of things in here that we'll have to fix after they finish killing you. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| bcaf876 | Never heard of 'em." "Yeah, you have, but context is everything, ain't it?" -- | James S.A. Corey | ||
| d1831d3 | Owning your own racing ship wasn't even wealth. It was like speciation. It was conspicuous consumption befitting ancient Earth royalty, a pharaoh's pyramid with a reaction drive. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| b703eaf | What are they going to do about it?" "So far? Get drunk. Yell at each other or at us. Design theoretical judicial systems. Most of them seem to want the whole thing to just go away sot hey can get on with their research." Murtry chuckled. "God bless the eggheads." | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 50f7d17 | And even then, she hadn't wanted to die. She'd just wanted it to be over. To be free of it all. For the pain and guilt to be over. And the feeling of being trapped. She might have been able to stand all the rest of it, but not the sense of being caught. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| d97c891 | Before Prax had gotten married, he'd seen a dance performance based on neo-Taoist traditions. For the first hour, it had been utterly boring, and then after that, the small movements of arms and legs and torso, shifting together, bending, and falling away, had been entrancing. The Rocinante slid into place beside an extending airlock port with the same beauty Prax had seen in that dance, but made more powerful by the knowledge that instead .. | James S.A. Corey |