We fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as beautiful, intelligent, and witty as we are ugly, stupid, and dull. But what if such a perfect being should one day turn around and decide they will love us back? We can only be somewhat shocked-how can they be as wonderful as we had hoped when they have the bad taste to approve of someone like us?
Alain de Botton
Related We are far from perfect but willing to be different. CRAIG GROESCHEL The words you can’t find, you borrow. We read to know we’re not alone. We read because w... GABRIELLE ZEVIN If we're honest with ourselves, most of us know the one thing we lack. CRAIG GROESCHEL People see what they want to see SUSAN BETH PFEFFER Who cares what are you eating?? Who cares where are you? Who cares what are you posting??<... DEYTH BANGER Even if our survival skills have become impediments we would like to let go of because they have cea... MAUREEN BRADY We all have thorns in our flesh. All of us. Love is when we stay and help someone pluck out their th... C. JOYBELL C. All good people agree, And all good people say, All nice people, like Us, are We An... RUDYARD KIPLING Parents, however old they and we may grow to be, serve among other things to shield us from a sense ... JANE HOWARD Dae FATE NAYAE Nanagha Vandhuttoom Da, Sandy , Na Nata, London Lass,Russian Grapes, Ellorum Ippa Van... SATHESH KUMAR M I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made ... RALPH WALDO EMERSON But the Universe gives us different sources of Love to unite us all as One. Who are we to decide wha... IMBOLO MBUE When we see one another as different aspects of ourselves—as ourselves experiencing a different si... JOSEPH P. KAUFFMAN It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may. We are never able to know ourselves ful... MOHANDAS GANDHI Each of us views life through a different lens. What we think is colored by the baggage we carry, an... LAURIE BUCHANAN, PHD It was pivotal in making you but you don't remember it. Or do you? Do we understand the events that ... DOUGLAS COUPLAND I am aware that everyone that exists has a story, and we all exist because that story is important f... ARZELL We are way less likely to love someone just because they love us than we are to hate someone just be... MOKOKOMA MOKHONOANA When we treat people merely as they are, they will remain as they are. When we treat them as if they... THOMAS S. MONSON Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it appears to be. JEFFREY FRY We start a relationship with someone not only because of how great they are but how great they make ... KAMAND KOJOURI When We have Patience in our minds and Love in our hearts, Nothing appears to be impossible or unrea... PHILIP T.M We cannot learn real patience and tolerance from a guru or a friend. They can be practiced only when... DALAI LAMA She is sugar, curiosity, and rain. E. LOCKHART He blesses us so we can be different. CRAIG GROESCHEL We are testing combinations of oils as well, to learn how they affect taste, cooking procedures, hol... DENNY LYNCH They had to learn from hard knocks, ... And I want us to be as prepared as we can. GEORGE PAYNE For only as we ourselves, as adults, actually move and have our being in the state of love, can we b... JOSEPH CHILTON PEARCE She did not need to fold into herself and self-destruct. Those awful things are survivable, because ... JOHN GREEN The injunction that we should love our neighbors as ourselves means to us equally that we should lov... BARBARA DEMING It's unfair because the people booing, I believe, wouldn't want to have their child booed. Fans don'... ALLEN IVERSON Most of us are not raised to actively encounter our destiny. We may not know that we have one. As ch... JULIA CAMERON We resent the thought that anything can please us when someone we love is no longer here to share th... L. M. MONTGOMERY We resent the thought that anything can please us when someone we love is no longer here to share th... L.M. MONTGOMERY When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be. LEO TOLSTOY For only as we ourselves, as adults, actually move and have our being in the state of love, can we b... JOSEPH CHILTON PEARCE One of the things we tell ourselves as African-Americans is if we work hard, play by the rules, we d... TA-NEHISI COATES We dance to seduce ourselves. To fall in love with ourselves. When we dance with another, we manifes... KAMAND KOJOURI We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known,... BRENé BROWN Humans have taken the wrong sight,they should enjoy life as they won't die one day.Nevertheless,we s... NISHI DE SILVA I mean they don't seem able to love us just the way we are. They don't seem able to love us unless t... J.D. SALINGER One day we were brought into the world, knowing love only as being what we had for our toys, family,... HARRIET BEECHER STOWE One day we were brought into the world, knowing love only as being what we had for our toys, family,... PIETRO ARETINO There’s this thing about shadows. They mimic us. They are a constant reminder of the fact tha... CHIRAG TULSIANI Can miles truly separate us from friends? If we want to be with someone we love, aren't we already t... RICHARD BACH If you were stranded on an island, and had the choice of something to have what would it be? The cho... AVIS JOHN Feast of Catherine of Siena, Mystic, Teacher, 1380 He has loved us without being loved... We are b... CATHERINE OF SIENA The kind of lies that someone tells us gives us an idea of how stupid, knowledgeable, intelligent, o... MOKOKOMA MOKHONOANA Inspired By Beauty In Creation We Are One DANIEL GILMAN We try to grab pieces of our lives as they speed past us. Photographs freeze those pieces and help u... GENE MCSWEENEY If we all look at life we think how nice, then we look at death and everybody goes oh you can say th... GARY F EVANS... No one can ever love us quite so much as we love ourselves. GORE VIDAL In a life, in any life, bad things happen. Many good things happen, of course, we know what they are... ROBERT GOOLRICK We were always eating expired things. Milk, bread, biscuits, cake. We forgot about them as they sat ... CHERYL JULIA LEE They have lied to us. They can't keep us from dying, so They lie to us about death. A cooperative st... THOMAS PYNCHON We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who lov... CASSANDRA CLARE If you accept that pets can love us as much as we do them, then the logic is clear and cannot be den... WALLACE SIFE But many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary i... BELL HOOKS The program fosters communication between teachers and students. Teachers will know if a student has... LORETTA PATTERSON It's a lie to think that you are not good enough. It's a lie to think that you are not beautiful. It... DISON ARNIBAL Six goals in 180 minutes is good offensive production and if we can carry those numbers into the fal... JANET RAYFIELD We have needed to define ourselves by reclaiming the words that define us. They have used language a... SELMA JAMES We can do nothing, we say sometimes, we can only pray. That, we feel, is a terribly precarious secon... A. J. GOSSIP When we borrow trouble, and look forward into the future and see what storms are coming, and distres... HENRY WARD BEECHER If we can't make any mistakes in front of anyone, how can anyone make any mistakes in front of us? I... AKIROQ BROST Our goal is to keep it moving and ride this as long as we can. One of the things Coach Hobbs keeps t... CARL ELLIOTT But new love only lasts so long, and then you crash back into the real people you are, and from as h... MARYA HORNBACHER Even as we enumerate their shortcomings, the rigor of raising children ourselves makes clear to us o... ANNA QUINDLEN They are someone we're a little nervous about because they're like us. They're on a Cinderella run. ... WHITNEY LINDSAY In every passing moment that is not appreciated time cannot give it back to you. So in moments of id... GARY F EVANS... Only after we can learn to forgive ourselves can we accept others as they are
because we don't feel ... STEPHEN COVEY And at once I fell in love with her, for if it is sometimes enough to make us love a woman that she ... MARCEL PROUST Their goal should be to impress us as to why their application is the one to be approved for that ar... JOEL GRICE What then in love can woman do? If we grow fond they shun us. And when we fly them, they pursue: But... JOHN GAY They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer... WILLIAM HAZLITT What then in love can woman do? If we grow fond they shun us. And when we fly them, they pursue: But... JOHN GAY Schools tell us if they want it or not and then we route it around to as many schools as we can. You... JOE ARMENIA Isn’t that the greatest tragedy? When someone rejects us, no matter how they abuse our love, we ho... SUZANNE ELIZABETH ANDERSON 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 That is the worst of women. They always want one to be good. And if we are good, when they meet us, ... OSCAR WILDE Maybe we shouldn't be looking for love. Maybe we should be looking for a person. Because maybe you c... C. JOYBELL C. It looks like everything came through the storm very well. Obviously we have to speak with the guys ... DAN RADAKOVICH They were just tougher than us physically. I thought we did a good job of getting ourselves back in ... JEFF MORGAN We believe because it gives us faith. It gives us the willingness to go through our day, to keep the... TARUN BETALA When circumstances feel as if they are turning surreal, like the current political situation. We can... ANITA B. SULSER I find that when we really love and accept and approve of ourselves exactly as we are, then everythi... LOUISE L. HAY Love means holding on to someone just as hard as you can because if you don't, one blink and they mi... ELLEN HOPKINS The books we love, they love us back. And just as we mark our places in the pages, those pages leave... JAY KRISTOFF It's true not because it's beyond doubt, but because we believe it to be true. We make it true. We a... BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA The reason to forgive ourselves is not because we feel like it or because we want to see ourselves a... SUE AUGUSTINE In periods of rapid personal change, we pass through life as though we are spellcast. We speak in se... DOUGLAS COUPLAND I've always loved you, and when you love someone, you love the whole person, as they are, and not as... LEO TOLSTOY All the things people carry in their hearts, love, hatred, fears, and they had to be shared with a f... SHAIKH ASHRAF Raise your children to love and embrace others. Tell them they are beautiful; they may grow up to be... KAIDEN BLAKE We have to find a way to allow (Hispanics) that want to come here and work to do so as long as we ca... MIKE ROGERS We were never perfect. There's no such thing as perfect. But it's not to late for us. We can still b... PITTACUS LORE When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, t... JOHN GREEN When adults say, 'Teenagers think they are invincible' with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, t... JOHN GREEN There is but one love of Jesus, as there is but one person in the poor -- Jesus. We take vows of cha... MOTHER THERESA The ugly and stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the pl... OSCAR WILDE
More Alain de Botton
Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how ... ALAIN DE BOTTON Atheism is having a heyday in the born-again United States. ALAIN DE BOTTON What bothers me is that there is so much emphasis on food, rather than gathering and meeting - so th... 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. ALAIN DE BOTTON Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them. ALAIN DE BOTTON The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of ... 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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... 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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... 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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... 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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 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