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Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.


Alain de Botton

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It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are humiliated by what is powerful and mean, but awed by what is powerful and noble.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Salvation is the creation of new desires, not just new goodies.
JOHN PIPER The only freedom that lasts comes from pursuing what we want when we want what we ought.
JOHN PIPER Do no look for that ideal person to be with, be that ideal person.
JEFFREY FRY Love is naked and unashamed and infinitely
assessable to the world He gave Himself up for.
CATHERINE TOON She buys "mixed salad greens" for seven dollars a bag, triple-washed with who knows what. And to get...
RUDOLPH DELSON Intimacy with God is not experienced through monolog prayers but through reflective listening as wel...
GARY ROHRMAYER Godliness with contentment is rare.
CRAIG GROESCHEL Abiding time is extravagant daily time with Jesus. This extravagant time is the center of abiding. N...
MISSIONARIES WHO LOVE THE ARAB WORLD Men and women of God through the centuries have lived out this abiding truth. There are no heroes of...
MISSIONARIES WHO LOVE THE ARAB WORLD In the unfixables of our lives we are invited to keep company with Jesus and take a risk that God's ...
ADELE AHLBERG CALHOUN Dost thou want another eye beside that of Him who sees every secret thing?
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON Just as teenagers can live in the same house as their parents, yet choose not to live “close” to...
THERESA DEDMON If I lay here
If I just lay here
would you lie with me and just forget the world?
SNOW PATROL Great balls of fire. Don't bother me anymore, and don't call me sugar.
MARGARET MITCHELL ‎"Ok... thats enough of this... time to get rich."
EULLYS "JEWELZ" HINNANT III I'm asking God to bless you with something that unsettles you, disturbs you, and upsets you.
CRAIG GROESCHEL Love is a Person Who wants to be known.
CATHERINE TOON It was really weird, like asking someone for dinner and presenting them with an empty plate,
JAMES JOHNSTON We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is com...
DR. SEUSS We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is com...
ROY CROFT We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is com...
JONATHAN MAIER Alain Chapelle [Ducasse's mentor], Alain Ducasse, Didier Elena - I learned from all of them.
ALAIN DUCASSE We're all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is co...
ROBERT FULGHUM We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is ...
ROBERT FULGHUM What makes humility so desirable is the marvelous thing it does to us; it creates in us a capacity f...
MONICA BALDWIN What makes humility so desirable is the marvelous thing it does to us; it creates in us a capacity f...
MONICA BALDWIN Whether you choose to move on from your struggles and enjoy life or waddle in your misery, life will...
GERMANY KENT To be fully alive, you need time with God to recharge.
CRAIG GROESCHEL Then you've made the only choice. But there's a penalty attached, as there is to most things you wan...
MARGARET MITCHELL You can't be jealous of someone else's results. You don't know the prayer, process, sacrifice, and w...
GERMANY KENT Nothing teaches us about the preciousness of the Creator as much as when we learn the emptiness of e...
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON Everything in Scripture is either preparation for the Gospel, presentation of the Gospel, or partici...
DAVE HARVEY Anyone can learn how to communicate with animals if they are open to the process and willing to prac...
KAREN A. ANDERSON Being different shouldn't be consider weird. Thinking that someone is weird because they are differe...
ROSA M. BETANCES We all have demons that were trying to fight; mine just happens to be you.
ANMOL ANDORE Water flows because it's willing.
MARTY RUBIN Go with the flow even if there are rapids ahead.
JIM GENOVESE Don't resist life, flow with it.
JIM GENOVESE Life is more like dancing than wrestling if you follow its rhythm.
JIM GENOVESE The problem with compassion is that it is not photogenic.
SEBASTIAN HORSLEY Longing hearts could only stand so much longing.
MARGARET MITCHELL It is usually unbearably painful to read a book by an author who knows way less than you do, unless ...
MOKOKOMA MOKHONOANA 'And so we exchange privacy for intimacy. We gamble with it, hoping that by exposing ourselves, som...
MAX BARRY We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is com...
DR. SEUSS The greatest win is walking away and choosing not to engage in drama and toxic energy at all.
LALAH DELIA Everything has it's own time and place, Transformation becomes effortless when we go with the flow.
SHELLI THOMPSON Suddenly she felt strong and happy. She was not afraid of the darkness or the fog and she knew with ...
MARGARET MITCHELL It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with...
JOHN RUSKIN It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with...
STACEY CHARTER It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with...
SWEDISH PROVERB “It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love w...
ASHISH KUMAR Why be an ostrich?
MARGARET MITCHELL Discipline leads us to desire, which matures into delight.
MISSIONARIES WHO LOVE THE ARAB WORLD True love is finding someone whose demons play well with yours" - The Joker
THE JOKER BATMAN ARKHAM CITY I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES It is certainly OK for anybody in an official capacity of the Church to minister to and be receptive...
DENNIS MCGRATH Be ok with anything and everything will be ok.
DAMIAN CUTILLO I like to not have to be 'on' for anybody.
INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE The Legend of Zorro,
INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE Louis, Louis, Louis...Stil whining, Louis! Are you quite finished? I've had to listen to that for ce...
INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE Louis: I'm flesh and blood, but not human. I haven't been human for two hundred years.
INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE Louis: You see that old woman? That will never happen to you. You will never grow old, and you will ...
INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE All day long you sit and sew,
Stitch life down for fear it grow,

Stitch life down fo...
EDITH SITWELL Where you are with what you have, what you can do.
DHARM BABU If someone ever says you’re weird, say thank you. And then curtsy. No, don’t curtsy. That might ...
ELLEN DEGENERES Rather than waging war with threats of expulsion, the focus should be on finding solutions to the le...
THOMAS KURTH Sleep is nature's inspirational pills that helps reawaken man's inspirational & hope botton.
DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN) Maybe mistakes are what make our fate... without them what would shape our lives? Maybe if we had ne...
CANDACE BUSHNELL She wrote to him fairly regularly, from a paradise of triple exclamation points and inaccurate obser...
J.D. SALINGER Father said I have no sense of humor at all. He said I was unequipped to meet life because I have no...
J.D. SALINGER You take a really sleepy man, Esmé, and he always stands a chance of again becoming a man with all ...
J.D. SALINGER He said I was unequipped to meet life because I had no sense of humor.
J.D. SALINGER Written in ink, in German, in a small, hopelessly sincere handwriting, were the words "Dear God, lif...
J.D. SALINGER Life is weird and wonderful like that, is it not.
SONYA.E.WILLIAMS Nobody is so weird others can't identify with them.
REBECCA MILLER I would rather be alone and happy than be with someone who makes me miserable!
JILL It's a weird concept, isn't it? I'll give them a letter that it's OK for them to use medically, and ...
DR. MARGARET A. SUN They knew that love snatched in the face of danger and death was doubly sweet for the strange excite...
MARGARET MITCHELL Take my handkerchief, Scarlett. Never, at any crisis of your life, have I known
you to have a h...
MARGARET MITCHELL Maybe that's what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit t...
EMILY GIFFIN O full and splendid Moon, whom I
Have, from this desk, seen climb the sky
So many a midnig...
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE The problem with me is that nothing embarrasses me.
DAVID HASSELHOFF Stop running from me and listen. I do want you. I want you even knowing if I marry you, I’ve got a...
LISA KLEYPAS Would it please you if I said your eyes were twin gold-fish bowls filled to the brim with the cleare...
MARGARET MITCHELL Intimacy is not purely physical. It's the act of connecting with someone so deeply, you feel like yo...
RESHALL VARSOS The problem with comedy audiences - it's like the Coliseum - when they see someone struggling, t...
JO BRAND Nineteen twentieths of [mankind is] opaque and unenlightened. Intimacy with most people will make yo...
JOHN ADAMS The adult incest survivor is likely to become involved in sexual relationships with older or more po...
E. SUE BLUME When I was working out with them, I knew I'd be OK.
LAMARCUS ALDRIDGE Lambhood and tigerishness may be found in either gender, and in the same individual at different tim...
MARGARET ATWOOD I get asked, 'What do you miss most about being a pastor?' I think it's the intimacy, th...
EUGENE H. PETERSON What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar thing...
GILBERT K. CHESTERTON Intimacy is something to be cherished, and intimacy is not something to be afraid of.
IRA SACHS Signature film-making seems rather dull to me; it's about finding something you can do something...
DAVID MACKENZIE The clit of a lady signifies,the magic botton that is the key to her gate of untold pleasure.
DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN) He'd hang around and if someone didn't have a partner, he'd see if he could go with them. Then we st...
BILL POPE So much of movie acting is in the lighting. And in loving your characters. I try to know them, and w...
RALPH FIENNES 23. With God, even when nothing is happening...something is happening.
JAMES C. DOBSON

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ALAIN DE BOTTON Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuou...
ALAIN DE BOTTON One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We read the weird tales in newspapers to crowd out the even weirder stuff inside us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.
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ALAIN DE BOTTON ...if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally blo...
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ALAIN DE BOTTON He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is c...
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ALAIN DE BOTTON It's very hard to respect people on holiday - everybody looks so silly at the beach, it makes yo...
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ALAIN DE BOTTON The thing is that love gives us a ringside seat on somebody else's flaws, so of course you'r...
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ALAIN DE BOTTON Laughter is an important part of a good relationship. It's an immense achievement when you can m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "lu...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We tend to think of philosophies as produced by professional philosophers. Traditionally, this has m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The romantic person instinctively sees marriage in terms of emotions, but what a couple actually get...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.
ALAIN DE BOTTON What makes people good communicators is, in essence, an ability not to be fazed by the more problema...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A world where a majority had imbibed the lessons implicit within tragic art would be one in which th...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Parents don't reveal how often they have bitten their tongue, fought back the tears, or been too...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The humanities have been forced to disguise, both from themselves and their students, why their subj...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I assemble my ideas in pieces on a computer file, then gradually find a place for them on a piece of...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Sometimes my biography is interpreted as the upbringing of a French aristocrat. It was very, very di...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.
ALAIN DE BOTTON The more people you have to ask for permission, the more dangerous a project gets.
ALAIN DE BOTTON What annoys me about most self-help books is that they have no tragic sense. They have no sense that...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.
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ALAIN DE BOTTON Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.
ALAIN DE BOTTON If you are pro love, you have to be a little bit disloyal to the romantic feelings that propel you i...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The number one person who needs my books is me. I'm not some sort of disinterested guru who has ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Parents become very good at not hearing the explicit words and listening instead to what the child m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Secular thinkers have a separation between thinking and doing. They don't have a grasp of the ba...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I waste most of the day, then finally start to write around 3 P.M., totally disgusted with myself fo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We have to put aside the customary historical reading of works of art in order to invite art to resp...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I remember going to university, and the people who'd left home for the first time looked at the ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Everyone's more vulnerable than they seem, and I think men are more vulnerable. Once you get clo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON At 'The School of Life', we take seriously anything that has to do with human fulfilment - a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A city like London is sociable in a sense that there are people gathering in bars and restaurants, c...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I was foreign and Jewish, with a funny name, and was very small and hated sport, a real problem at a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON As for despair, it comes about when I have been a fool and hate myself and despair of my personality...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Therapy and counseling can do wonderful things for people. But they have emerged so far as what are ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The idea that one might use art for 'instrumental' reasons tends to set off alarm bells at t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are never through with the requirement for acceptance. This isn't a curse limited to the inadequa...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentia...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - tha...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day-to-day take on things. The bare fa...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are certainly influenced by role models, and if we are surrounded by images of beautiful rich peo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The Arab-Israeli conflict is also in many ways a conflict about status: it's a war between two p...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Getting to the top has an unfortunate tendency to persuade people that the system is OK after all.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Katie Price is no exception. She, too, is - in a distinctive way - a philosopher. Partially, Katie P...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Used to do a lot of falling in love with people, almost in the street, and imagining that there woul...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Le Corbusier is an outstanding writer. His ideas achieved their impact in large measure because he c...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Since the beginning of the 20th century, the public's relationship to art has been weakened by a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There's a certain kind of insular, old-fashioned, upper-class Britishness that gives me the spoo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON After Carol had left, as Symons threw away a pile of used tissues and rearranged the cushions on the...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I've had my successes and failures. I know many academics in my field loathe me. I've come t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere - and I really don't get on with mach...
ALAIN DE BOTTON For thousands of years, it had been nature--and its supposed creator--that had had a monopoly on awe...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom
we know nothing. Romances...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A person cannot be at once a libertine and a married Romantic, however compelling both paradigms mig...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the inferiors of the virgin land they have repla...
ALAIN DE BOTTON What we typically call love is only the start of love. Our understanding of love has been hijacked a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON On account of its scale and complexity, the world will always outstrip the capacity of any single bo...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writer...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Emotional life is - alongside work - one of the great challenges of existence and is a theme that I ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once (we soon feel ungrateful) or tho...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were w...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There are few more effective ways to promote tolerance between suspicious neighbours than to force t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There's a constant tension between the excitement of new people and security with one person. If...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never sav...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There is no one more likely to destroy us than the person we marry.
ALAIN DE BOTTON The challenge lies in knowing how to bring this sort of day to a close. His mind has been wound to a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Many people in the intellectual elite are very scared of shouting. They insist on very quiet murmurs...
ALAIN DE BOTTON as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status an...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Far from rejecting outright any hierarchy of success or failure, philosophy instead reconfigures the...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is according to how we are able to answer the question of what we do (normally the first enquiry ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia have never sought to do away entirely with the statu...
ALAIN DE BOTTON People who hold important positions in society are commonly labelled "somebodies," and their inverse...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answe...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There is a danger of developing a blanket distaste for modern life which could have its attractions ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.
ALAIN DE BOTTON A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire li...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
ALAIN DE BOTTON When does a job feel meaningful? Whenever it allows us to generate delight or reduce suffering in ot...
ALAIN DE BOTTON One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A good half of the art of living is resilience.
ALAIN DE BOTTON ...workplace dynamics are no less complicated or unexpectedly intense than family relations, with on...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are humiliated by what is powerful and mean, but awed by what is powerful and noble.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Literature has always had its circus side, its freaks and its frivolities - and maybe that's all par...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I love the idea of a university as away from capitalist values, where people can do things that don&...
ALAIN DE BOTTON What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent techno...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is one of the unexpected disasters of the modern age that our new unparalleled access to informat...
ALAIN DE BOTTON In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Blind impatience is equally evident in the fruit section. Our ancestors might have delighted in the ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Bitterness: anger that forgot where it came from.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surren...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t al...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who w...
ALAIN DE BOTTON In Britain, because I live here, I can also run into problems of envy and competition. But all this ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Snobbery exists in all areas of life, not least literary criticism. By snobbery I mean, any method o...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to h...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I've tried to write about Heathrow before and been escorted off the premises.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Because I have this thing about birthdays--they always remind me of death and forced jollity.
ALAIN DE BOTTON He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on p...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The feeling one has no time to get anything done provides the pressure that guarantees one does get ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I'm fascinated by Comte's clear-eyed analysis of what was wrong with modern society, which i...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The most courageous act in politics is to try to understand your opponent.
ALAIN DE BOTTON The idea of a book that can make a change to your life, that can affect your perspective, is a beaut...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The philosophy I love is very selective. It is really just the bit that is involved in a search for ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is hope--with regard to our careers, our love lives, our children, our politicians, and our plane...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I learnt to stop fantasising about the perfect job or the perfect relationship because that can actu...
ALAIN DE BOTTON He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity--suggesting that a...
ALAIN DE BOTTON There are books that speak to us of our own lives with a clarity we cannot match. They prevent the m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON On paper, being good sounds great but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the workplace or community ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Travel is a lot like love.
ALAIN DE BOTTON What is fascinating about marriage is why anyone wants to get married.
ALAIN DE BOTTON I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Learning to give up on perfection may be just about the most romantic move any of us could make.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Work is a way of bringing order to chaos, and there's a basic satisfaction in seeing that we are...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I like working with people. I believe change can only come through collaboration.
ALAIN DE BOTTON I see religion as a storehouse of lots of really good ideas that a secular world should look at, rai...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Rather than getting more spoilt with age, as difficulties pile up, epiphanies of gratitude abound.
ALAIN DE BOTTON For the rest of history, for most of us, our bright promise will always fall short of being actualis...
ALAIN DE BOTTON In 'Art as Therapy', we argue that art is a tool that can variously help to inspire, console...
ALAIN DE BOTTON 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...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Partially undermining the manufacturer's ability to assert that its work constituted a meaningful co...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Pegging your contentment to the overall state of the world rather than of your own life: the basis o...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The solution as consumers is - perhaps surprisingly - to take adverts very, very seriously. We shoul...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We don't need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have m...
ALAIN DE BOTTON To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humani...
ALAIN DE BOTTON I think of myself as quite a shy person. But when I'm curious about something, I'll go quite...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Artworks are especially good at helping our psyches in a variety of ways: they rebalance our moods, ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON [T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister th...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true.
ALAIN DE BOTTON Whatever modern democracies may tell themselves about their commitment to free speech and to diversi...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing coun...
ALAIN DE BOTTON To be loved by someone is to realize how much they share the same needs that lie at the heart of our...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as beautiful, intelligent, and...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.
ALAIN DE BOTTON A storyteller who provided us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortu...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up...
ALAIN DE BOTTON The Anxiety of Sunday afternoon: your unlived lives and infinite possibility pressing upon the const...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpre...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Even if our loved ones have assured us that they will be busy at work, even if they told us they hat...
ALAIN DE BOTTON You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneven...
ALAIN DE BOTTON What a peculiar civilisation this was: inordinately rich, yet inclined to accrue its wealth through ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Despite the best efforts of critics and the hopes of authors, our tastes in books are probably as in...
ALAIN DE BOTTON We would like to go and see the field that Millet…shows us in his Springtime, we would like Claude...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Our feelings of anxiety are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss, and so need to be ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for maki...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It was no longer her absence that wounded me, but my growing indifference to it. Forgetting, however...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we c...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Every fall into love involves the triumph of hope over self-knowledge. We fall in love hoping we won...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Nature puts us all in our places. Being made to feel small isn't something we welcome when it's done...
ALAIN DE BOTTON in Flaubert’s eyes, that only entirely illiterate and uneducated Frenchmen now stood a chance of b...
ALAIN DE BOTTON A clean conscience is the preserve of those without sufficient imagination.
ALAIN DE BOTTON In the past, Flaubert implied, idiots had had no clue as to what the carbon structure of diamonds wa...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.
ALAIN DE BOTTON But we would do well to meditate daily, rather as the religious do on their God, on the 9.5 trillion...
ALAIN DE BOTTON To a shameful extent, the charm of marriage boils down to how unpleasant it is to be alone. This isn...
ALAIN DE BOTTON One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.
ALAIN DE BOTTON What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books written bec...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we ...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Unrequited love may be painful, but it is safely painful, because it does not involve inflicting dam...
ALAIN DE BOTTON It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as t...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Jarenlang kwam ik bij het boodschappen doen langs een huis dat weliswaar een van de lelijkste gebouw...
ALAIN DE BOTTON Snobbery exists in all areas of life, not least literary criticism. By snobbery I mean, any method o...
ALAIN BOTTON Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writer...
ALAIN BOTTON I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - tha...
ALAIN BOTTON I am in general a very pessimistic person with an optimistic, day-to-day take on things. The bare fa...
ALAIN BOTTON