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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| e92a937 | We place such demands on our partners, and become so unreasonable around them, because we have faith that someone who understands obscure parts of us, whose presence solves so many of our woes, must somehow also be able to fix everything about our lives. We exaggerate the other's powers in a curious sort of homage--heard in adult life decades down the line--to a small child's awe at their own parents' apparently miraculous capacities. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 6263eb5 | I was relying on youth be loyal to the specific variety of compromise and unhappiness, which our hard-won marriage represents. | marriage | Alain de Botton | |
| 3e656fa | No one properly gets, or can fully sympathize with, anyone else. | Alain de Botton | ||
| a6ce5f6 | The difference could be grouped into categories of mature and immature love. Preferable in almost every way, the philosophy of mature love is marked by an active awareness of the good and bad within each person, it is full of temperance, it resists idealization, it is free of jealousy, masochism, or obsession, it is a form of friendship with a sexual dimension, it is pleasant, peaceful, and reciprocated (and perhaps explains why most people.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| ff2ec16 | Kendimizi bildik bileli burclara ve kisisel fallara merak duymamizin nedeni,anlasilma tutkumuzu uyandiriyor olmalaridir. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 6c85c17 | Uma pessoa nunca e boa ou ruim per se, o que significa que ama-las ou odia-las tem necessariamente em sua base um elemento subjetivo e talvez ilusionista. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 005cb4a | To make it into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 14c3cce | Eu me desnudo emocionalmente quando confesso minha carencia - que estarei perdido sem voce, que nao sou necessariamente a pessoa independente que tentei aparentar. Na verdade, nao passo de um fraco, cuja nocao dos rumos ou do significado da vida e muito restrita. Quando choro e lhe conto coisas que, confio, serao mantidas em segredo, coisas que me levarao a destruicao, caso terceiros tomem conhecimento delas, quando vou a festas e nao me en.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 8521be0 | I loved her body for the promise of who she was. It was a most inspiring promise. | Alain de Botton | ||
| c17cf0e | We can claim to have begun to know someone only when they have substantially disappointed us. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 614afa7 | The most fulfilling human projects appeared inseparable from a degree of torment, the sources of our greatest joys lying awkwardly close to those of our greatest pains... Why? Because no one is able to produce a great work of art without experience, nor achieve a worldly position immediately, nor be a great lover at the first attempt; and in the interval between initial failure and subsequent success, in the gap between who we wish one day .. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 12bcd35 | A popular perception that political news is boring is no minor issue; for when news fails to harness the curiosity and attention of a mass audience through its presentational techniques, a society becomes dangerously unable to grapple with its own dilemmas and therefore to marshal the popular will to change and improve itself. | change curiosity disengagement improvement news politics | Alain de Botton | |
| 4734bb3 | We should add: it is a privilege to be the recipient of a sulk; it means the other person respects and trusts us enough to think we should understand their unspoken hurt. It is one of the odder gifts of love. | sulking | Alain de Botton | |
| 42642af | Objects mimic in a material dimension what we require in a psychological one. We need to rearrange our minds but are lured towards new shelves. We buy a cashmere cardigan as a substitute for the counsel of friends. We | Alain de Botton | ||
| 2473c66 | Our inner lives must be lent a structure and our best thoughts reinforced to counter the continuous pull of distraction and disintegration. Religions have been wise enough to establish elaborate calendars and schedules. How free secular society leaves us by contrast. Secular life is not, of course, unacquainted with calendars and schedules. We know them well in relation to work, and accept the virtues of reminders of lunch meetings, cash-fl.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 908ea7e | shq rmntykh chyzy st khh m r dywnhwr bh jstwjw mykhshd t shrykh zndgy khwd r pyd khnym, hmn ykh nfr khh dygr nyz tmmy rtbThy jtm`y r bry m brawrdh mykhnd w khfy st!!! | Alain de Botton | ||
| eab9cca | Tendemos a nos apegar a uma nocao fixa das emocoes, como se existisse uma linha entre amar e nao amar que pudesse ser cruzada somente duas vezes, no inicio e no fim de um relacionamento, em vez de transposta minuto a minuto. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 4d97775 | For most of our lives, sex seems fated to remain steeped in longing and awkwardness. Whatever the manuals may promise, there are really no solutions to the majority of the dilemmas sex creates for us. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 709b971 | Work finally begins," says Alain de Botton, "when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly." | Megan McArdle | ||
| e96095f | E um sinal de que duas pessoas tenham parado de amar uma a outra (ou pelo menos parado de desejar fazer o esforco que constitui noventa por cento do amor)quando nao sao mais capazes de transformar diferencas em piadas. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 44adcca | There is no necessary connection between the concepts of home and of prettiness; what we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistently available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding on to. | Alain de Botton | ||
| c708a5a | Alice loved in order to make up for her own insufficiencies, she searched in others for qualities she aspired to, respected but lacked. Her emotional needs were like a puzzle incomplete without a segment brought by another but the dimensions of the void altered in response to self-development, the piece which fitted at fifteen would no longer fit at thirty. The gap redrew its contours, and unless the puzzle-person kept up she would be left .. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 0b5f6c4 | While mourning the number of missed opportunities, we have no reason to abandon a belief in the ever-present possibility of moulding circumstances for the better. | Alain de Botton | ||
| ade40cb | A marriage doesn't begin with a proposal, or even an initial meeting. It begins far earlier, when the idea of love is born, and more specifically the dream of a soul mate. | marriage-love | Alain de Botton | |
| b79591b | We would ideally remain able to laugh, in the gentlest way, when we are made the special target of a sulker's fury. We would recognise the touching paradox. The sulker may be six foot one and holding down adult employment, but the real message is poignantly retrogressive: 'Deep inside, I remain an infant, and right now I need you to be my parent. I need you correctly to guess what is truly ailing me, as people did when I was a baby, when my.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 4c45583 | At the end of seven hundred and twelve pages of this manuscript,' he had reported, 'after innumerable griefs at being drowned in unfathomable developments and irritating impatience at never being able to rise to the surface - one doesn't have a single, but not a single clue of what this is about. What is the point of all this? What does it all mean? Where is it all leading? Impossible to know anything about it! | Alain de Botton | ||
| 710aaf2 | Expecting to find the answer, we find only the duplicate of our own problem. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 81ebceb | Biriyle yuz yirmi yil bir arada yasasak,bize ne dusundugumuzu sorsalar,onun karmasik kisiliginin hakkini vermemiz ve "Onu henuz tanimaya basladim" diye yanitlamamiz gerekir.Ancak bunun yerine,biriyle tanistiktan iki dakika sonra bir izlenim olusur zihnimizde: "Ondan hoslandim/ Ondan hoslanmadim".Biyolojik bir ihtiyacin ilkel kalintisidir bu tepki;magara adami,birisiyle karsi karsiya geldiginde onun dost mu dusman mi oldugunu bir bakista anl.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 3bbceed | For Proust, an injection of jealousy is the only thing capable of rescuing a relationship ruined by habit. | long-term-relationships marcel-proust relationships | Alain de Botton | |
| acf4f26 | Why is this painful journey so indispensable to the acquisition of true wisdom?...It is as if the mind were a squeamish organ that refused to entertain difficult truths unless encouraged to do so by difficult events. "Happiness is good for the body," Proust tells us, "but it is grief which develops the strengths of the mind." These griefs put us through a form of mental gymnastics which we would have avoided in happier times. Indeed, if a g.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| e6d6ba1 | Humboldt's early biographer, F.A. Schwarzenberg, subtitled his life of Humboldt What May Be Accomplished in a Lifetime. He summarised the areas of his subject's extraordinary curiosity as follows: '1) The knowledge of the Earth and its inhabitants. 2) The discovery of the higher laws of nature, which govern the universe, men, animals, plants, minerals. 3) The discovery of new forms of life. 4) The discovery of territories hitherto but imper.. | accomplish-the-impossible alexander-von-humboldt explorers philosophy scientists travel | Alain de Botton | |
| c0727cd | Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval. That | Alain de Botton | ||
| b21f276 | Once a partner has begun to lose interest, there is apparently little the other can do to arrest the process. Like seduction, withdrawal suffers under a blanket of reticence. The very breakdown of communication is hard to discuss, unless both parties have a desire to see it restored. This leaves the lover in a desperate situation. Honest dialogue seems to produce only irritation and smothers love in the attempt to revive it. Desperate to wo.. | love partner sad | Alain de Botton | |
| 48a042b | Public opinion is the worst of all opinions. | Alain de Botton | ||
| d1ffb35 | In an ideal world, marriage vows would be entirely rewritten. At the altar, a couple would speak thus: "We accept not to panic when, some years from now, what we are doing today will seem like the worst decision of our lives. Yet we promise not to look around, either, for we accept that there cannot be better options out there. Everyone is always impossible. We are a demented species." After the solemn repetition of the last sentence by the.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| c489457 | It seems easier to respond to our enthusiasms by trading in facts than by investigating the more naive question of how and why we have been moved | Alain de Botton | ||
| a933224 | At the heart of the pain created by sexual rejection is our habit of interpreting it as a moral judgement, when it might more accurately be categorized as a mere accident. We can start to break free from this torture by recognizing that the evenings that don't work out are really just a minor species of bad luck. The | Alain de Botton | ||
| ca875b2 | Nature puts us all in our places. Being made to feel small isn't something we welcome when it's done to us by another person, but to be apprised of our essential nothingness by something so much greater than ourselves is in no sense humiliating. Our egos, exhaustingly aware of every slight they receive and prone relentlessly to compare their advantages with those enjoyed by others, may even be relieved to find themselves finally humbled by .. | Alain de Botton | ||
| fbe7d3a | Does what is praised becomes better? Does an emerald become worse if it isn't praised? And what a gold, ivory, a flower or a little plant? | Alain de Botton | ||
| 1a6070d | Every year, humanity produces some 30,000 films, 2 million books and 100,000 albums, and 95 million people visit a museum or art gallery. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 8226d2f | When we suspect that we are appropriate targets for hurt, it does not take much for us to believe that someone or something is out to hurt us | self-knowledge | Alain de Botton | |
| e3dce79 | How logical, then, that we should as adults find ourselves rejecting certain candidates not because they are wrong but because they are a little too right - in the sense of seeming somehow excessively balanced, mature, understanding and reliable - given that, in our hearts, such rightness feels foreign and unearned. We chase after more exciting others, not in the belief that life with them will be more harmonious, but out of an unconscious .. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 2276172 | To grow interested in any piece of information, we need somewhere to 'put' it, which means some way of connecting it to an issue we already now how to care about. | categorization information interest organization | Alain de Botton | |
| 57a1fc7 | Yet we can perhaps only ever fall in love without knowing quite who we have fallen in love with. The initial convulsion is necessarily founded on ignorance. Love or simple obsession? | Alain de Botton |