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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 7bb2d87 | Then I noticed a small plate of complimentary marshmallows near Chloe's elbow and it suddenly seemed clear that I didn't love Chloe so much as marshmallow her. What it was about a marshmallow that should suddenly have accorded so perfectly with my feelings towards her I will never know, but the word seemed to capture the essence of my amorous state with an accuracy that the word love, weary with overuse, simply could not aspire to. Even mor.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 9a2e6bb | In a world beset by fundamentalists of both believing and secular varieties, it must be possible to balance a rejection of religious faith with a selective reverence for religious rituals and concepts. | Alain de Botton | ||
| c37adac | If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest - in all its ardur and paradoxes - than our travels. They express, however inarticulately, an understanding of what life might be about, outside the constraints of work and of the struggle for survival. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 78c3572 | Wanting to sound like other people has its temptations. There are inherited habits of speech guaranteed to make us sound authoritative, intelligent, worldly, appropriately grateful, or deeply moved. | Alain de Botton | ||
| dae066b | We need long train journeys on which we have no wireless signal | Alain de Botton | ||
| 29a4ede | Rejection hurts so much because we take it as a damning judgement passed not merely on our physical appeal but on our entire selves, and by extension (at this stage we're crying into our pillow, as something by Bach or Leonard Cohen plays on the stereo) on our very right to exist. 2. | Alain de Botton | ||
| cabb5e5 | m byshtr z ynkhh ngh rmntykh bh wqy` dshth bshym, Glb z trykhy zyd dr rnjym. m byshzHd nsbt bh mshkhlt w by`dlty jhn aghy drym w bh Trz ntwnkhnndh dr brbr anh Hss D`f w khwchkhy mykhnym. | Alain de Botton and John Armstrong | ||
| f120f38 | Maturity means acknowledging that Romantic love might only constitute a narrow and perhaps rather mean-minded aspect of emotional life, one principally focused on a quest to find love rather than to give it, to be loved rather than to love. Children may end up being the unexpected teachers of people many times their age, to whom they offer--through their exhaustive dependence, egoism, and vulnerability--an advanced education in a wholly new.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 0d94056 | To be mature is, we're told, to move beyond possessiveness. Jealousy is for babies. The mature person knows that no one owns anyone. | maturity possessiveness | Alain de Botton | |
| 55adefa | we would not reliably assent to reproduce unless we first had lost our minds. | philosophy relationships schopenhauer | Alain de Botton | |
| 5e928b3 | It has provided not only physical but also psychological sanctuary. It has been a guardian of identity. Over the years, its owners have returned from periods away and, on looking around them, remembered who they were. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 2ea40de | The word power typically signifies a capacity for action. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us power lies in an 'ability to do or effect something or anything, or to act upon a person or thing'. The person who has power may influence the material or social environment, generally on the basis of possessing high-tech weapons, money, oil, superior intelligence or large muscles. In war, I am powerful because I can blow up your city walls or d.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| e1d3041 | 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. Eventually | Alain de Botton | ||
| a1bba6a | Despite the liberal atmosphere of our time, it would be naive to assume that the distinction between "weird" and "normal" has disappeared. It stands as secure as ever, waiting to intimidate and herd back into line those who would question the normative limits of love and sex. It may now be deemed "normal" to wear cutoff shorts, expose belly buttons, marry someone of either gender, and watch a little porn for fun, but it also remains indispe.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| c87c523 | But seriously, if you asked most people whether they believed in love or not, they'd probably say they didn't. Yet that's not necessarily what they truly think. It's just the way they defend themselves against what they want. They believe in it, but pretend they don't until they're allowed to. Most people would throw away all their cynicism if they could. The majority just never get the chance. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 7ad8dea | It was a symbol of what Ruskin had done for Proust, and what all books might do for their readers, namely bring back to life, from the deadness caused by habit and inattention, valuable yet neglected aspects of experience. | Alain de Botton | ||
| b5e9499 | The fear of forgetting anything precious can trigger in us the wish to raise a structure, like a paperweight to hold down our memories. We might even follow the example of the Countess of Mount Edgcumbe, who in the late eighteenth century had a thirty-foot-high Neoclassical obelisk erected on a hill on the outskirts of Plymouth, in memory of an unusually sensitive pig called Cupid, whom she did not hesitate to call a true friend. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 4df0141 | What we find beautiful and what we see as attractive are indicators of what we crave in order to become properly 'whole'. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 19cccdf | In a more evolved world, one a little more alive to the Greek ideal of love, we would perhaps know to be a bit less clumsy, scared, and aggressive when wanting to point something out, and rather less combative and sensitive when receiving feedback. The concept of education within a relationship would thus lose some of its unnecessarily eerie and negative connotations. We would accept that in responsible hands, both projects--teaching and be.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| eb17769 | Because fulfillment is an illusion, the wise must devote themselves to avoiding pain rather than seeking pleasure, living quietly, as Schopenhauer counseled, 'in a small fireproof room' -- advice that now struck Nietzsche as both timid and untrue, a perverse attempt to dwell, as he was to put it pejoratively several years later, 'hidden in forests like shy deer.' Fulfillment was to be reached not by avoiding pain, but by recognizing its rol.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 95b75f5 | hnr mshkhlt m r nkhr nmykhnd, z m nmykhwhd shdbshym, bh m mygwyd khh ndwh r dr qrrdd zndgy nwshthnd. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 2071fd4 | It was a reminder that the labeling of others is usually a silent process. Most people do not openly force us into roles, they merely suggest that we adopt them through their reactions to us, and hence surreptitiously prevent us from moving beyond whatever mold they have assigned us. 12. A | Alain de Botton | ||
| 7ec0d95 | As David lifted a suitcase onto the conveyor belt, he came to an unexpected and troubling realisation: that he was bringing himself with him on his holiday. Whatever the qualities of the Dimitra Residence, they were going to be critically undermined by the fact that he would be in the villa as well. | Alain de Botton | ||
| d14c707 | Despite our best efforts to clean it of its peculiarities, sex will never be either simple or nice in the ways we might like it to be. | Alain de Botton | ||
| d9a50b6 | Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. | Alain de Botton | ||
| abee3b8 | Every fall into love is the triumph of hope over self-knowledge | essays idealization love on-love philosophy | Alain de Botton | |
| 5ac80c3 | kn f`l lktb@ mdfw`an bkhyb@ l'ml mn lmHyTyn bh, wlknh knt mmzwj@ - m` dhlk - bl'ml bsh'n 'n ykwn thm@ shkhS akhr fy mkn m syfhmh; kn ktbh mwjhan l~ ljmy` wGyr mwjh l~ 'Hd bltHdyd. kn mdrkan lmfrq@ lt`byr `n '`mq dhth llGrb fy lmktbt: "'shy kthyr@ lm 'kn mhtman blbwH bh l'y shkhS bdhth 'SbHt 'bwH bh lljmy`, wlmn ywd m`rf@ 'shd 'fkry sry@, bd't 'Hyl '`z 'Sdqy'y l~ rf lmktb@." | فهم فلسفة كتابة وحدة | Alain de Botton | |
| ef85f8e | Every writer is obliged to create his own language, as every violinist is obliged to create his own "tone".... I don't mean to say that I like original writers who write badly. I prefer--and perhaps it's a weakness--those who write well. But they begin to write well only on condition that they're original, that they create their own language. Correctness, perfection of style do exist, but on the other side of originality, after having gone .. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 13e1ec8 | My siblings had already instilled the notion of black pride in me. I would have preferred that Mommy were black. Now, as a grown man, I feel privileged to have come from two worlds. My view of the world is not merely that of a black man but that of a black man with something of a Jewish soul. I don't consider myself Jewish, but when I look at Holocaust photographs of Jewish women whose children have been wrenched from them by Nazi soldiers,.. | James McBride | ||
| 14ca2ba | She wore a flowered blue dress of the type whores naturally favored, and that thing was so tight that when she moved, the daisies got all mixed up with the azaleas. She walked like a warm room full of smoke. | James McBride | ||
| c6843e0 | James Brown hid everything, and in the game of instant information he lost big-time, because the information machine turns a truth into a lie and a lie into the truth, transforms superstitions and stereotypes into fact with such ease and fluidity that after a while you get to believing as I do, that the media is not a reflection of the American culture but rather is teaching it. As long as James Brown was selling records he let that crazine.. | James McBride | ||
| c0c2d7f | Can't expect everyone to be on the same page. We're still humans after all. Some percentage of us are always going to be assholes. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| a450dbc | It was strange how nothing could change while everything did. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| b8e358e | If someone is ready to accept Christ, it doesn't take much effort on my part to help them. If they aren't, no amount of hectoring them does any good. So why try? | James S.A. Corey | ||
| a5522e2 | Only, so far, it was like a bunch of lizards watching the World Cup. Politely put, they weren't sure what they were looking at. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 7d23850 | Any meeting with Martian command is going to have to wait until after the situation on Ganymede is stabilized. Official diplomatic talks before then are only going to make it seem like we've accepted the new status quo." That was Admiral Nguyen, youngest of the men present. Hawkish. Impressed with himself in the way that successful young men tended to be. General" -- | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 43bcaf8 | I hear Montana is nice." "Population density is good. Still more cows than people." | James S.A. Corey | ||
| a650e66 | Still. Maybe some good can come out of it. I admire your psychotic optimism. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 5569fbf | We have expended two-thirds of our rail-gun ammunition," the weapons tech announced. "Shall I maintain fire?" "Yes," Drummer said. "Then start putting chairs in the launcher. We hit that thing until we're down to pillows and beer." | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 77c48a9 | It was possible she was hurling her prayers at a cold and unfeeling universe that didn't hear them, but that wasn't how it felt. 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, and Anna suspected the universe didn't.. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 06315e0 | 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. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 2b3cd17 | The keel-mounted rail gun pushed the whole ship backward in a solid mathematical relationship to the mass of the two-kilo tungsten round moving at a measurable fraction of c. Newton's third law expressed as violence. Holden's | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 7acdfc4 | What are you going to do?" "The same thing as always. Try to keep civilization from blowing up while the children are in it." | James S.A. Corey | ||
| e4db0b5 | So I have a thing." "Is it a thing I can fix?" Holden asked. "Point me at the thing." | James S.A. Corey |