For the rest of history, for most of us, our bright promise will always fall short of being actualised; it will never earn us bountiful sums of money or beget exemplary objects or organisations....

Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or a bicycle.


Alain de Botton

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I was a very un-literary child, which might reassure parents with kids who don't read.
ALAIN DE BOTTON
In our more arrogant moments, the sin of pride—or superbia, in Augustine's Latin formulation—tak...
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Partially undermining the manufacturer's ability to assert that its work constituted a meaningful co...
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Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis o...
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The solution as consumers is - perhaps surprisingly - to take adverts very, very seriously. We shoul...
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We don't need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have m...
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To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humani...
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I think of myself as quite a shy person. But when I'm curious about something, I'll go quite...
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Artworks are especially good at helping our psyches in a variety of ways: they rebalance our moods, ...
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[T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister th...
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It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will...
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The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true.
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Whatever modern democracies may tell themselves about their commitment to free speech and to diversi...
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The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing coun...
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To be loved by someone is to realize how much they share the same needs that lie at the heart of our...
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We fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as beautiful, intelligent, and...
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Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
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A storyteller who provided us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortu...
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We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up...
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The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the const...
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Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpre...
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We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for ...
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Even if our loved ones have assured us that they will be busy at work, even if they told us they hat...
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You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneven...
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What a peculiar civilisation this was: inordinately rich, yet inclined to accrue its wealth through ...
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Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as in...
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We would like to go and see the field that Millet…shows us in his Springtime, we would like Claude...
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Our feelings of anxiety are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss, and so need to be ...
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Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for maki...
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It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however...
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Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we c...
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Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won...
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Nature puts us all in our places. Being made to feel small isn't something we welcome when it's done...
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in Flaubert’s eyes, that only entirely illiterate and uneducated Frenchmen now stood a chance of b...
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A clean conscience is the preserve of those without sufficient imagination.
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In the past, Flaubert implied, idiots had had no clue as to what the carbon structure of diamonds wa...
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Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
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But we would do well to meditate daily, rather as the religious do on their God, on the 9.5 trillion...
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To a shameful extent, the charm of marriage boils down to how unpleasant it is to be alone. This isn...
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One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
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What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of ...
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Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books written bec...
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It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we ...
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Unrequited love may be painful, but it is safely painful, because it does not involve inflicting dam...
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It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as t...
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Jarenlang kwam ik bij het boodschappen doen langs een huis dat weliswaar een van de lelijkste gebouw...
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Snobbery exists in all areas of life, not least literary criticism. By snobbery I mean, any method o...
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Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writer...
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I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - tha...
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I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day-to-day take on things. The bare fa...
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